27 Feb 12 | Leveson Inquiry, News and features
Former Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Brian Paddick, has described a culture of cover-up and infighting among senior officers during his time at the force.
Testifying at the Leveson Inquiry today, Paddick called for a change in culture “from the top”, arguing that it was important for there to be a healthy and “above-board” relationship between the police and the press, suggesting that relations between the two should be on the basis of formal, minuted meetings, “not on gossiping over dinners or booze”.
“We have to draw a line when it comes to police officers being paid for information,” Paddick added. “I do not accept (…) that if a story is in the public interest you can pay a public official to disclose information,” he said.
He told the Inquiry that the Met’s commissioners had “conducted charm offensives with mixed success” and wrote in his witness statement that the efforts made to get positive stories into the media “distorted” senior officers’ judgments.
“The difficulty comes when the police have to prosecute their ‘friends’” his statement read.
Paddick wrote that the culture at the Met went from being “very open to almost paranoid” during Sir Ian Blair’s Commissionership. He cited a “clampdown on anyone having contact with the media”, and unsuccessful investigations being launched to look into unauthorised leaks of information. He added that “good relationships” with UK newspaper editors were “seen as being more important than ever”.
He added that the Met sought to prevent certain stories from getting into the public domain in order to protect its reputation. He told the Inquiry he was ordered to “tone down” criticisms made of a review into rape investigations by the Met that had found “serious shortcomings” and made recommendations. The press officer involved said her job was to “make sure report got no publicity”, Paddick added, arguing that the interests of rape victims were sacrificed to protect the Met.
He opined that the “desire of the MPS to avoid public embarrassment and reputational damage may have led them not to pursue evidence of possible police corruption and to mislead the public about the ambit and scale of phone-hacking.”
He noted that within six days of the arrests of Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire in August 2006, 418 potential hacking victims had been identified, but “only a tiny fraction of those people were actually told”.
Paddick also told the Inquiry his name appeared on a printout from private investigator Glenn Mulcaire’s computer, listed as a “project”, which he said meant it was “reasonable [that] there was a prima facie case I was a target for phone hacking.”
He also revealed that a printout from Mulcaire’s computer that was shown to a police officer appeared to contain details of people who had been given new identities after being put on the Witness Protection Programme.
“It would have included people like the people convicted of James Bulger’s murder,” he said. “People are only put into the witness protection programme when their lives are potentially at risk or in serious danger. For this to be in the hands of Mulcaire and potentially the News of the World is clearly worrying.”
He stressed he had the “utmost respect” for current DAC Sue Akers, the officer leading the investigations into illegal behaviour of journalists, but added that it was “difficult to see how everybody can have complete confidence we are going to get to the bottom of what is going on” He suggested it would be better for public perception if current investigations were being conducted by an outside force not connected to the Met.
Last year Paddick and the former deputy Prime Minister Lord John Prescott successfully argued at a judicial review that the Metropolitan Police failed to notify them about potential hacking.
Prescott, who also appeared before the court this afternoon expressed his unease about the relationship between politicians and the press.
“I’m not the best person to ask about relationships with the press because mine has never been good but with regards to the Murdoch press, I always thought it was wrong that politicians at the highest level were too close to Murdoch…There is always a price. It’s not exactly corruption and I’m not accusing them of that…I thought it gave a corrupting influence that they had too much influence and power.”
Prescott added that that he was opposed to a statutory regulation, even though he believes he has “as much reason as anyone to have a go at the press”. The former MP suggested a regulatory framework, to be decided on by a judge, adding: “You have to find a balance that people think is fair. What’s made the difference is no-win no-cost. I just think if you can’t get redress, you’ve got to have a sanction.”
Describing the stories regarding his social life, the politician told the court he had wondered where stories came from, but never imagined that his phone had been hacked. In December 2009, Prescott was told by police that there was no evidence that Glenn Mulcaire had intercepted his voicemail, but police said there were two tax invoices and a piece of paper with “Prescott” written on it.
“That should be a good clue to a policeman that there is something there. I did suspect at first they meant my son because the Murdoch press and the Times had done a number of stories on him but I’ve since been assured not,” Prescott told the court.
He added that misleading statements and the failure of the police to provide him with the information he believed he was entitled to, led him to take legal action.
27 Feb 12 | Leveson Inquiry
The Metropolitan police’s Deputy Assistant Commissioner told the Leveson Inquiry this morning that Operation Elveden has revealed there was “a culture at the Sun of illegal payments while hiding the identity of the officials”.
Discussing the recent arrests of journalists at the tabloid over alleged improper payments, Sue Akers said that payments to sources were openly referred to within the Sun, and that one official has been paid more than £80,000 over a number of years, while another journalist received £150,000 over a period to pay a source.
Akers said Operation Elveden, which investigates payments to police officers, revealed a “network of corrupted officials”, and that payments were made not only to police officers but wide range of public officials across the military, prisons, police and health departments. Akers added that were was a “tradecraft” of hiding cash payments by making them to a source’s friend or relative, a practice that was authorised at a “senior level” at the paper.
The majority of payments she had seen evidence of had led to articles that were “salacious gossip rather than anything that could regarded as remotely in the public interest”, Akers claimed.
The revelations were made as the Leveson Inquiry began its second module, which examines the relationship between the press and the police.
In a dramatic morning, Inquiry counsel Robert Jay QC discussed an email from ex-News International legal manager Tom Crone to former News of the World editor Andy Coulson, which revealed that Coulson was told in 2006 that there were over £1 million of payments to private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, and that Mulcaire had hacked hundreds of phones.
The email, based on a briefing that Crone had been told by then Sun editor Rebekah Brooks, showed that Brooks was aware the police had found evidence of News International’s payments to Mulcaire, and that police had asked her whether she “wanted to take it [the investigation] further”.
It was revealed that after the 2006 arrest of Mulcaire and former News of the World royal reporter Clive Goodman, the police realised that there were hundreds of individuals who had been targeted for hacking, yet argued that counter-terrorism was more important than investigating the practice.
In his opening remarks, Jay said the relationship between News International and the Metropolitan police was “at best inappropriately close, and if not actually corrupt, very close to it.”
He added that there was an “obvious risk when two powerful organisations come into contact” arguing that there was scope for “self-interest” and that it “does not take many rotten apples to undermine the whole body politic.” Jay cited that risks might include off the record briefings with an “obvious lack of transparency” and the attribution of stories to police sources who may not in fact be police sources.
Lord Justice Leveson also made a thinly-veiled rebuttal of remarks made by education secretary Michael Gove that the Inquiry had had a chilling effect on the British press.
Leveson argued that criticism of the Inquiry was “troubling”, and that the inquiry itself had “done no more than follow its mandated terms of reference”.
In a speech to journalists at Westminster last week, Gove claimed there was now a “chilling atmosphere towards freedom of expression which emanates from the debate around Leveson”.
“I do not believe the inquiry was or is premature, and I intend to continue to do neither more nor less than was required of me,” Leveson said.
He reiterated his belief in freedom of speech and freedom of the press, but said journalism must obey the “rule of law” and act in the public interest. He said he was “not interested” in becoming an arbiter of what a free press should look like.
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13 Feb 12 | Leveson Inquiry
The Sun’s associate editor Trevor Kavanagh has launched a stirring attack on the police in this morning’s paper. When Kavanagh lays out of what happened over the weekend, it’s hard not to agree that this looks like an assault on the press by an overzealous police force. While there is a criminal investigation ongoing and the police will need to talk to people, dawn raids at the weekend seem excessive and intimidatory.
Brian Cathcart suggests:
“As for the [Metropolitan Police], it is doing its job. It may well be doing it with a special zeal, in response to criticisms about a previous absence of zeal, but we can hardly complain about that either. “
I think I can complain, if I’m honest. The Met’s embarrassment over past unwillingness to investigate phonehacking does not give it licence to act disproportionately now, and journalists being roused from their beds by police is a bit too close for comfort to the kind of events we at Index cover and campaign on in the less free world. Moreover, one can’t help feel this is all part of an attempt to show willing ahead of the Leveson Inquiry’s scrutiny of the relations between police and the press, due to begin at the end of February.
Kavanagh correctly points out that “illegal” practices take part across the media. As Index noted in our submission to the Leveson Inquiry, these practices can be justified if there is a public interest and a clear line of accountability within the publication.
He then notes that the UK rates below Slovakia, Poland and Estonia in press freedom. The post-Soviet countries the UK is behind are not exactly Belarus or Turkmenistan, or indeed Russia, but Kavanagh is technically correct on this. The rating comes from Reporters Without Borders’ (RSF) annual Press Freedom Index. The RSF report comments:
Against the extraordinary backdrop of the News of the World affair, the United Kingdom (28th) caused concern with its approach to the protection of privacy and its response to the London riots. Despite universal condemnation, the UK also clings to a surreal law that allows the entire world to come and sue news media before its courts.
The “surreal law” referred to is English defamation law, while the “approach to privacy” is the fondness for the judicial injunction displayed by those who seek to stifle stories about them, not, as one might read it, the tendency of certain gentlemen of the press to listen to people’s voice messages.
While it may be tempting to aim a dismissive “calm down, dear” at Kavanagh, we should not pretend that there are no press freedom issues at stake in this country.
