Calls are mounting for a public inquiry into the phone-hacking scandal that has engulfed the News of the World.
Ed Miliband led the demands for a full judicial inquiry, after it emerged last night that the parents of missing schoolgirl Milly Dowler were given false hope that their daughter was still alive, and police were misled, because her voicemail was being accessed and messages deleted after her disappearance. In fact she was lying murdered in woodland a few miles from her home.
“[The public] will be horrified that the grieving parents of an abducted child were made to go through further torture that somehow she was alive because her voicemails were being retrieved or deleted,” the Labour leader said.
“My wife said to me this morning ‘this is sick, what was going on’ and I think that is going to be the reaction of people up and down this country.”
Self-regulation of newspapers through the Press Complaints Commission “wasn’t working” and needed to be looked at, Mr Miliband added. “We need a proper inquiry into the culture and practices which allowed these things to happen.”
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Former Tory minister Lord Fowler described the latest hacking allegation as “almost beyond belief and certainly beyond contempt”, as he called for a public inquiry during an emergency Lords debate on the issue. He said that the allegations were among the most serious to be levelled against the media in living memory, and were evidence of a conspiracy against the public.
He received cross-party backing from Lib Dem peer Lady Williams and from former Labour Deputy Prime Minister Lord Prescott, who was himself a victim of alleged phone hacking. Lord Prescott queried whether News Corporation, the parent company of News International which owns the News of the World, should be allowed to go ahead with its proposed takeover of BSkyB.
Keith Vaz, the chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, agreed that an overarching inquiry was needed once Operation Weeting, the criminal investigation by Scotland Yard into alleged widespread hacking of the phones of high profile figures, had come to an end. In the meantime, he said, his committee would question the Home Secretary to find out whether hacking had interfered with police investigations in other high profile murders, such as the Soham killings.
“Obviously what has been uncovered as the Prime Minister has said and Mr Miliband and others have said is pretty shocking, and I think we need to know who knew what when? What did they do about it? And how best they can ensure Parliament and the public that this kind of activity is not continuing? ” Mr Vaz said.
Mark Lewis, a lawyer for the Dowler family, also backed calls for a public inquiry, warning that the police investigation would probably never put all the relevant facts in the public domain, especially if any defendants pleaded guilty. He described the alleged actions by private investigator Glenn Mulcaire on behalf of the News of the World as “despicable” and “heinous”.
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Louise Mensch, Tory MP for Corby and East Northamptonshire and a member of the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, said that any inquiry needed to be robust and transparent if it was to restore public confidence.
“We have to assume that Milly Dowler was not the only crime victim whose phone was hacked,” she warned, adding that the family of abducted toddler Madeleine McCann were an obvious case where phones might have been hacked.
Members of the Government expressed their horror, but refrained from backing a public inquiry. The Deputy Prime Minister said the police must be allowed to complete their investigation first into whether a private investigator, working for the News of the World, accessed and deleted messages on the phone of Milly Dowler, after she went missing.
Pressed by Harriet Harman, Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, to call for a public inquiry, Nick Clegg replied: “What Milly Dowler’s family want to know is who did what when, who knew what they were doing and who will be held to account.” Speaking at DPM questions in the House of Commons’ chamber, he argued that answering those questions would only be possible if the police were allowed to pursue the evidence “wherever it leads”.
“I think it’s totally shocking, frankly it’s disgusting,” said Theresa May, the Home Secretary. “The mindset of somebody who thinks it’s appropriate to do that is totally sick.”
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She told MPs on the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee that the police investigation must take its course. “It is up to [the police] to follow the investigation and follow the evidence and to decide, as a result of that, whether or not they feel that anyone should be charged or prosecuted.”
Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, said that the allegations were “appalling”, but added that the issue should not be confused with the proposed takeover of BskyB by News Corporation, the parent company of News International which owns the News of the World and The Times.
“There’s a danger of mixing up two issues here. The revelation this morning about the hacking are terrible. The intrusion into this family, the distress that was caused are absolutely appalling,” said Dr Cable.
“There is a criminal inquiry into hacking going on in parallel with this, this will no doubt provide additional material for that. That’s quite separate from the decisions about media plurality. Prescribed by law, the culture secretary is having to make a decision based on that. It really has nothing to do with the hacking inquiry.”
Pushed on whether Rebekah Brooks, the chief executive of News International who was editor of the News of the World at the time of the Dowler murder, should “examine her conscience” and resign, he said: “A lot of people have to examine their conscience because it’s an appalling state of affairs, a terrible thing to have done. And those people who are responsible have got to take the consequences, which may indeed involve the criminal law. ”
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Mr Miliband called for Ms Brooks to consider her position, and Stephen Abell, the director of the PCC, said that she should “take responsibility” for what happened.
Meanwhile Baroness Buscombe, the chairman of the PCC, defended its failure to monitor and prevent alleged media wrongdoing. “We didn’t have the evidence. I am the regulator but there is only so much we can do when people are lying to us,” she said.
“We know now that I was not being given the truth by the News of the World. Who knows if there are other newspapers that have lied?”
She said that the PCC had issued tough new guidelines on newspaper practices in 2007, and that these had been strengthened still further since she joined the PCC two and a half years ago.
“Words cannot describe how angry I am with this, totally angry. First of all, I’ve been working really hard for the past two and a half years on my watch since I arrived in 2009 to further improve, to beef up the PCC. The reality is that we have to be careful, this is allegations going back to 2002, two people went to prison in 2006/7 but what was happening then was totally and utterly – we understand now – appalling.”
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John Whittingdale, chairman of the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, said that the police were also to blame, accusing detectives of a long-standing lack of “willingness” to investigate phone-hacking allegations properly.
Mr Whittingdale said: “There have been previous police investigations which concluded there wasn’t evidence. Even what is coming out now is evidence that has been in the possession of the police ever since the original arrest of Glenn Mulcaire.”
Mr Whittingdale agreed with Dr Cable that the phone-hacking claims, however serious, should not be mixed up with News Corporation’s planned full takeover of BSkyB.
He added: “News Corp is a global enterprise and I don’t think one should condemn an entire global organisation for something that, very clearly, was going wrong at the News of the World.”