Pressure intensified on News International this morning as David Cameron condemned the alleged hacking of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler’s mobile phone as a “truly dreadful act”, and Ed Miliband called on the company’s chief executive to consider her position.
Speaking in Afghanistan, where the issue was raised by journalists at a press conference on British troop withdrawals, the Prime Minister said that the allegations were appalling.
“If they are true, this is a truly dreadful act and a truly dreadful situation,” said Mr Cameron.
“What I have read in the papers is quite, quite shocking, that someone could do this actually knowing that the police were trying to find [Milly] and trying to find out what had happened.”
Mr Cameron referred to the Metropolitan Police’s wider investigation into alleged phone-hacking by news organisations, codenamed Operation Weeting, and he urged detectives to pursue their inquiries “without fear or favour... to get to the truth of what happened”.
Advertisement
This morning detectives from the Operation Weeting team met senior executives from News International to discuss the latest allegations.
The meeting was part of a series of regular communications between police and the publishing company which have been taking place since the new police investigation was launched six months ago.
It is understood that ongoing developments in the case, including the allegations over the hacking of Milly’s phone and the phones of her parents, were discussed.
News International was represented at the meeting by Will Lewis, Group General Manager, and Simon Greenberg, Director of Corporate Affairs.
A source said: “It was a regular meeting which was in the diary and has been taking place every fortnight. We can’t say specifically what discussions took place but current and new issues were on the agenda.”
Advertisement
Police have informed the Dowler family that after 13-year-old Milly went missing near her home in Walton-on-Thames her voicemails were intercepted by phone hacker Glenn Mulcaire at the instigation of the News of the World, Mark Lewis, a lawyer for the Dowler family, said yesterday.
As the increasingly desperate messages left by Milly’s family and friends threatened to fill her phone’s mailbox, Mulcaire deleted older messages to leave room for more, Mr Lewis claimed, adding that the News of the World had published a story that was apparently based on information from the voicemails.
He described the newspaper’s alleged actions as “despicable”, and announced that the family intended to sue.
It has been suggested that the act of accessing and deleting the messages may have fooled detectives that Milly was still alive. Surrey Police has denied that its investigation was compromised by the hacking.
There were calls this morning for Rebekah Brooks, who was editor of the News of the World in the spring of 2002 when Milly was abducted, to consider her position as chief executive of News International.
Advertisement
Mr Miliband, the Labour leader, said Ms Brooks should “consider her conscience and consider her position”. He described the phone hacking scandal as “truly immoral” and “sick” and said there should be a public inquiry once the police investigation ended.
Stephen Abell, the director of the Press Complaints Commission, said Ms Brooks should “take responsibility” for any allegations of phone-hacking. He stopped short of calling for Ms Brooks’ resignation, however, saying “that’s got to be a matter for her”.
Ms Brooks has reportedly told colleagues that she is not planning to quit. Later today she is expected to tell staff at News International that she is deeply shocked by the allegations, which the company has been working through the night to investigate.
Ms Brooks has indicated that the first she knew of the alleged hacking of Milly’s phone was yesterday, when the Dowler family said that they intended to sue. According to reports Ms Brooks has spoken to Rupert Murdoch, the owner of News Corporation, News International’s parent company, and is under no pressure from him to stand down.
A spokesman for News International, which also publishes The Times, said: “This case is clearly a development of great concern and we will be conducting our own inquiries as a result.
Advertisement
“We will co-operate fully with any police request should we be asked.”
Police are deciding whether to bring criminal charges against journalists.
Detectives have told Ms Brooks that her own mobile phone messages were intercepted.
The Dowler family’s lawyer say that the police investigation is not enough, however. Mr Lewis added his voice to calls for a public inquiry into the phone hacking scandal. He predicted that there were would be more revelations and warning that the police inquiry would not necessarily uncover the truth as Mr Cameron hoped.
“It depends if charges are made, and if people plead guilty or not guilty,” said Mr Lewis. “I’m sure that there will be more allegations. It is very difficult to think how anything could be worse, but there could be things as bad.”
Advertisement
Meanwhile a campaign has begun on Twitter, the microblogging website, to pressurise large companies to withdraw their advertising from the News of the World, to show their disapproval of the Dowler allegations.
Tony Kennick, a citizen blogger who works as a consultant with the Sheffield-based web firm TechnoPhobia, is urging other Twitter users to contact the Co-Operative Bank, First Choice holidays, Renault cars and a number of other major companies asking them to boycott the newspaper. The campaign appeared to be gaining traction online, with a stream of thousands of retweets.
The latest development in the long-running phone hacking claims appears to have moved the scandal about illegal newsgathering to a new level.
Mulcaire and Clive Goodman, the News of the World’s former royal editor, were jailed in 2007 after admitting intercepting voicemail messages left for aides to the royal household and other public figures.
The police seized 11,000 pages of notes from Mulcaire’s home during the initial investigation in 2006. These documents have since suggested that a large number of other public figures fell victim to hacking. Politicians, sporting figures and celebrities have either been contacted directly by the police with details of what information was intercepted, or have been invited to get in touch with detectives to be shown any reference to them in the documents.
Scotland Yard has been forced to open a new inquiry, Operation Weeting, which has led to five arrests including three present or former News of the World journalists, a freelance reporter and a Press Association correspondent.
The new investigation also has access to a wealth of material provided by News International, and 50 detectives, including officers seconded from rape and murder units, are working on the case.
News International has established a £15 million compensation fund to pay damages to victims of phone hacking.
Former deputy prime minister Lord Prescott said on Twitter that he would write to the culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, asking him to block News Corporation’s attempt to take full control of BSkyB following the revelations about Dowler.
But Mr Cameron made clear that he would not intervene in the bid.
“The Government, on these processes, is acting in a quasi-judicial way and it is quite right that the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Jeremy Hunt) carries out his role in that manner without any interference from anyone else in the Government,” he said.
John Whittingdale, chairman of the Culture, Media and Sport select committee, agreed that alleged hacking at the News of the World and the Sky takeover bid should not be linked. But the senior Tory backbencher accused News International – and the police - of a long-standing lack of “willingness” to investigate phone hacking allegations fully.
“There have been previous police investigations which concluded there wasn’t evidence,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“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.”