02 Apr 12 | Leveson Inquiry
A former senior executive of the News of the World who was contracted to provide PR advice to the Scotland Yard has defended his police contacts.
Recalled to the Leveson Inquiry today, Neil Wallis brushed off the suggestion by Robert Jay QC that dining with officers might lead to a perception of “over-cosiness”, rejecting the notion that experienced officers such as Lord Stevens were “going to be seduced by me taking him out for steak & chips”.
He said his going out for dinner with a police officer was no different from a civil servant doing so with a businessman. “Have you ever had a working lunch with somebody more than once?” he asked the Inquiry. “It is the way of the world.”
Defending his trade, Wallis said: “Journalists live and die by their contacts. I nurtured these contacts because that’s what journalists do. ”
“I’ve built relationships with the police, politicians,” he said, “I haven’t put an arm lock on these people.”
He emphasised what he saw as a greater need for public officials to talk to journalists. “We need more talking, rather than less,” Wallis said, arguing it was healthier for democracy and a free press.
The Metropolitan police has faced criticism for awarding Wallis’s company, Chamy Media, a £24,000-a year contract to provide communications advice to the Met on a part-time basis from October 2009 to September 2010. Giving evidence at the Inquiry last month, former commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson said that it was with hindsight that he regretted the force entering into a contract with Wallis. Last week, the Met’s communications chief, Dick Fedorcio, resigned after disciplinary proceedings were launched against him, with an inquiry by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) into Wallis’ contract finding that Fedorcio had a case to answer for gross misconduct.
Discussing the arrangement, Wallis said his value was providing “crisis management” to the force.
He also described his working relationship with senior officers at the Met prior to his departure from journalism in 2009. Wallis dated this back to the the tenure of Lord Condon (1993-2000) and stressed the setup was “corporate, strategic” and not about “a quick hit for a story”.
“One benefit of my relationship with senior offices was, if I rang and said ‘we have situation Met needs to get involved with’, they’d take it seriously because they’d know I’m a guy who wouldn’t mess them about,” Wallis told the Inquiry.
He added that he advised Lord Stevens on his application as Met commissioner, advising him to emphasise he was a “coppers copper”. Wallis stressed he himself had “strong views” on what was happening at the Met at the time in light of the Macpherson report into the murder of Stephen Lawrence, and that whoever succeeded Lord Condon was an “important appointment” for the force.
In his witness statement Wallis wrote: “It should not come across that my involvement in advising the senior police officers from Scotland Yard was entirely altruistic. There was something in it for me and my newspaper.”
He added that when the paper was running a highly public campaign, senior officers would write exclusive articles of give quotes in support which would go into the tabloid.
Wallis was arrested in July 2011 as part of Operation Weeting, the Met’s investigation into phone hacking. He was bailed and has not been charged.
Also giving evidence this morning were Stewart Gull of Jersey States Police, Paul McKeever of the Police Federation, and Mark Burns-Williamson and Nathan Oley, both of the Association of Police Authorities. Oley, the APA’s head of press and public affairs, said guidelines for press-police contact as suggested in the Filkin report would be “helpful” for the future.
“We’re entering unchartered territory,” Oley said, citing greater media interest in policing. He said the Inquiry’s outcomes were crucial to ensure a “free flow of information” by both parties.
The Inquiry continues tomorrow.
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19 Mar 12 | Leveson Inquiry
The associate editor (news) of the Sunday Express has said a Guardian story from July 2011 alleging the News of the World had deleted voicemail messages on murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler’s phone “chronically and potentially fatally” damaged press-police relations.
James Murray told the Leveson Inquiry that the article, which alleged the tabloid had deleted messages on the abducted teenager’s phone, giving her family false hope that she was alive and listening to her voicemail, had an “enormous impact” throughout the industry.
“We spent an enormous amount of time building up relations with Surrey police, meeting them for briefings, having coffee, gaining their trust,” he said. “All that trust was blown out of the water.”
He added that normal lines of communication have since been damaged, noting later: “Everyone’s cautious, everyone’s frightened.”
Last December the Metropolitan police announced that the tabloid may not have deleted Dowler’s voicemails, though it remains uncontested that the paper hacked her phone.
In response to this morning’s revelation that the News of the World had employed their own surveillance team to identify suspects and the deployed Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) team in the 2006 Ipswich murders inquiry, Murray warned against journalists acting as detectives. “Playing an amateur detective can get you into all sorts of trouble and that’s not what we’re about,” he said.
He added that the now defunct tabloid was a “lone wolf” in the field of surveillance, saying it had been mentioned the paper had resources to employ ex-detectives, and that he could not think of another mainstream newspaper that had “such a well-organised enterprise.”
On recommendations for press-police relations, Murray argued that issuing written guidelines would be “frankly ridiculous”, though he said a “broad-based framework” might be helpful.
Speaking earlier today, John Twomey, chair of the Crime Reporters Association and crime correspondent at the Daily Express, also warned against what he termed a “freezing effect” if all contact between reporters and journalists were to be recorded.
“Officers would be less likely to talk to you,” he said. “Some officers may just cease contact with you completely.”
Daily Star reporter Jerry Lawton also expressed his concern that the Inquiry may have impacted on the relationship between reporters and police forces, noting that lines of communication had “been shut down all over the place.”
“My concern in the fall-out from phone hacking and this series of inquiries is that a wedge will be driven between the police and press that will restrict the level of trust and guidance, therefore making accurate reporting more difficult,” Lawton wrote in his witness statement.
The Inquiry continues tomorrow, with further evidence from crime reporters, staff from West Midlands Police and Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe of the Metropolitan police.
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19 Mar 12 | Leveson Inquiry
A retired criminal investigator has accused the News of the World of jeopardising the investigation into murder of five women in Ipswich in 2006.
Testifying before the Leveson Inquiry this morning, Dave Harrison was part of a Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) team deployed to the Ipswich murder inquiry, in which five women were killed between October and December 2006. His team’s objective was to put any suspect under surveillance.
He said he was told that the News of the World had employed their own surveillance team made up of “ex-special forces soldiers, whose objectives were to identify any suspects we were working on, and to identify us and our operation base.”
“Someone in the police had found out that SOCA was being deployed and passed this information to the media,” Harrison wrote in his witness statement.
Harrison added that a surveillance team from the Sunday Mirror was also employed to “pick up and interview” the first suspect in the inquiry. In his witness statement, Harrison wrote that colleagues watched the suspect “being picked up and driven round by a team that carried out anti-surveillance manoeuvres before dropping him off at a hotel to be interviewed.”
Harrison said he believed the News of the World surveillance jeopardised the murder investigation by potentially hindering SOCA’s own surveillance. He told the Inquiry that a murder suspect, revisiting the scene of the crime, might halt or change his movements if they believed they were being followed. “The evidence would be lost and the prosecution case weakened.”
“If our surveillance had been weakened by having to try and avoid other surveillance teams looking for us, if we had lost the suspect he may have gone on and committed further murders,” Harrison added.
“If we had lost the suspect because of their actions there could have been tragic consequences.”
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