14 Mar 12 | Leveson Inquiry
The president of the Crime Reporters’ Association, Jeff Edwards, was encouraged by his former boss at the News of the World to bribe police officers for information, the Leveson Inquiry heard today.
Edwards joined the now defunct tabloid in 1981 and was appointed crime correspondent soon after. Around the end of 1983, his then line manager told him he was unhappy with his work, arguing that he was not producing enough stories.
Pressuring him to improve his performance, Edwards’ boss told him: “we have plenty of money available, let your contacts in the police know that we will reward them for good information.”
“I do not remember what I said in return but I remember being worried about both my job and what my boss was suggesting as I had never paid police officers before, and was worried about the legal and ethical issues involved,” Edwards wrote in his witness statement.
“No more was said for about three or four weeks, but I did not offer bribes or rewards to any police contacts and clearly my performance was still not good enough because the News Editor confronted me again. He was angry and again said words to the effect that I should be paying police officers to induce them to pass on information,” he continued.
“I do remember that I became upset and said to him that I disapproved strongly of such methods and said something on the lines that I thought we were about exposing hypocrisy and corruption and yet here we were with him instructing me to bribe police officers.”
Edwards added that he felt this was the “final nail” in his coffin: “I remember him becoming angry and saying words to the effect that ‘if you will not do my bidding I will find someone who will’.”
He was removed from his position as crime correspondent and returned to the main newsroom as a general reporter the following week.
Edwards said he worked with “many excellent and enterprising journalists who upheld the best traditions of the profession” at the News of the World, but noted his feeling that there was a “section of the staff who displayed dishonest and devious behaviour”. He said the culture at the Daily Mirror, where he later became chief crime correspondent, was “far removed” from that of the Sunday tabloid.
Elsewhere in his oral testimony, Edwards claimed the police operate on a “blame culture” during crises or scandals, and will take the “easier option” of closing down “as much engagement as possible.”
He advocated “delicate adjustments” being made to the rules of engagement between police and the press, pushing for a more “common sense” approach rather than what he termed a “carpet-bombing of the system.”
The Inquiry continues tomorrow with further evidence from crime reporters, as well as former Times lawyer Alastair Brett and Peter Tickner, former Director of Internal Audit at the Metropolitan police.
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13 Mar 12 | Leveson Inquiry
The Metropolitan police’s senior press officer has told the Leveson Inquiry that she was not aware that the force had hired a former executive editor at the News of the World as part of a PR consultancy arrangement until after his contract had been terminated.
Giving evidence this morning, Sara Cheesley said she only became aware of Neil Wallis’s £24,000-a-year PR consultancy at Scotland Yard in July 2011. Wallis’s company, Chamy Media, provided communications advice to the Met on a part-time basis from October 2009 to September 2010.
Cheesley said she was “a bit surprised” when she learned of the contract. An incredulous Lord Justice Leveson said: “I am just surprised that you didn’t know anything about him at all.”
Also giving evidence today was the Met’s communications chief Dick Fedorcio, currently on extended leave from Scotland Yard since August pending an investigation into Wallis’s contract arrangement.
Leveson questioned him about the possibility of a “reputational risk” for the Met hiring Wallis months after the Guardian reported on phone hacking at the now defunct tabloid. “And here you were contemplating giving a chap who was deputy editor at the time?”
Fedorcio, who has been the Met’s director of public affairs since 1997, responded that he did not see it that way at the time. In his witness statement he wrote that “on a professional basis, Nell Wallis fully met my requirements; we knew nothing about Neil Wallis that would be to his detriment.”
“There was no indication that he was suspected of involvement in criminality — he had never been named, implicated or questioned regarding phone hacking; he had never been required to resign over the issue at the paper; the phone hacking investigation was closed; and Nell Wallis was no longer employed by the News of the World and was now setting up his own media business,” Fedorcio continued.
He added that former assistant commissioner John Yates had asked Wallis in August 2009 if “there was anything that was going to emerge at any point about phone-hacking that could ’embarrass the MPS, me, him or the Commissioner’,” and that Yates received “categorical assurances that this was the case”.
“As John Yates had obtained and recorded this assurance I felt there was no need for me to repeat the question,” Fedorcio wrote.
In his oral testimony he revealed he was “surprised” about the extent of the out-of-hours meetings between Yates and Wallis, but said he was aware that the two “got on well” and that there was “banter” between them over football matters. Fedorcio added that, had he known the pair were close, he might have thought that hiring Wallis was inappropriate.
He also clarified that Wallis himself had put his name forward for the position over a lunch, “rather than it being proposed by anyone else”, as Ferdorcio had suggested to the Home Affairs select committee in July 2011.
He also revealed that on one occasion in 2010 he let former News of the World crime editor Lucy Panton type a story from his email account on his standalone computer, as the reporter was “under pressure” from the tabloid to file copy. He recalled that Panton had arrived at an end-of-the-week meeting, which Fedorcio had set up with the tabloid paper in order to work with them at an earlier opportunity on stories, with her notes for a story on former Metropolitan Police commander Ali Dizaei, who was jailed for corruption in 2010.
“I was present in the office throughout this time, and therefore got advance sight of a story about an MPS officer,” he wrote in his witness statement, admitting to the Inquiry later that it “may have been an error of judgment”.
The Inquiry continues tomorrow, with evidence from crime reporters.
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06 Mar 12 | Leveson Inquiry
Lord Stevens, former commissioner of the Metropolitan police, has told the Leveson Inquiry that he “had to get out” of a contract involving writing columns for the News of the World.
“The whole thing just didn’t seem right to me,” Stevens said. He noted that he decided to terminate his contract with the paper — which involved his writing several pieces over a two-year period following his autobiography being serialised in the tabloid — some months after the convictions of royal reporter Clive Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire of phone hacking.
He said he was paid £5,000 for the two articles he penned for the paper.
He told Inquiry counsel Robert Jay QC he had also heard further information about “unethical behaviour” at the now-defunct tabloid, which he later clarified as “general behaviour”.
Elsewhere in his testimony, he said that as commissioner he would have been “quite ruthless” in pursuing issues related to phone hacking later raised by the Guardian. “I’d have gone on and done it,” he said. “That’s what police officers are paid to do, to enforce the law.”
Also appearing today was chief constable of Surrey police and former Met office Lynne Owens. Quizzed over whether her approach of only meeting journalists at New Scotland Yard rather than in a social setting was “austere”, Owens said she felt it was “entirely appropriate”.
She also told the Inquiry she found it “abhorrent” that a police officer could leak information about celebrities when they appear at police stations. “I don’t think people who behave like that should be in the police service,” she said.
The Inquiry continues tomorrow with further evidence from former Metropolitan police staff, including former commissioner Lord Blair.
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05 Mar 12 | Leveson Inquiry
The former commissioner of the Metropolitan police has said a “closed” and “defensive” mindset were the reasons behind the force not investigating phone hacking further in 2009.
Sir Paul Stephenson told the Leveson Inquiry there was a “flawed assumption” that the original 2006 investigation, Operation Caryatid, which led to the jailing of former News of the World royal reporter Clive Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, had been sufficient.
He added that the force was hookedon a “defensive” strategy that would not expand its resources without new evidence.
In July 2009, then Assistant Commissioner John Yates was asked to review the 2006 investigation, but ruled that there was no fresh material that could lead to convictions.
Asked about re-opening the investigation in 2009, Stephenson said it “was simply not a matter of priority” for him. He added: ” Do I believe that there was a deliberate attempt to back off because it was News International? No I do not, sir.”
Chiming with the evidence given last Thursday by the Met’s former Deputy Assistant Commissioner, Peter Clarke, Sir Paul agreed that priority in 2009 was investigating terrorism.
In his witness statement, Stephenson wrote that following the Met’s launch of hacking investigation Operation Weeting in January 2011, the the Chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority, Kit Malthouse, expressed a view that “we should not be devoting this level of resources to the phone hacking inquiry as a consequence of a largely political and media driven ‘level of hysteria’.”
Sir Paul was also quizzed about the controversial appointment of former News of the World deputy editor Neil Wallis as a PR consultant for the Met in 2009. In his statement Sir Paul wrote that “with the benefit of hindsight I regret that the MPS entered into a contract” with him.
He said the pair had met in 2006, and that he himself played no part in selecting Wallis’s PR firm, Chamy Media, as a consultant, noting that it was handled by the Met’s public affairs director, Dick Fedorcio.
Sir Paul added that he had no reason to doubt that Wallis was a fit and proper person to be awarded the contract.
He said was made aware in April 2011 that Wallis was a “person of interest” in Operation Weeting, and in July that he had been arrested.
Elsewhere in his testimony, Stephenson told the Inquiry that there was the potential to become “obsessed” by headlines, and having to deal with “negative commentary” was “distracting” for senior officers. He added that there were individuals on the management board who gossiped and leaked to the press, creating a “dialogue of disharmony”.
Discussing his resignation last summer amid speculation over the Met’s links with News International and his relations with Wallis, Sir Paul said he had always held the view that “if the story becomes about a leader — as opposed to what you do — that’s a bad place to be.”
“I didn’t think I had any alternative and out of a sense of duty and honour I decided to resign,” he said.
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