Andy Coulson, the former aide to the Prime Minister, was editor of the News of the World when the newspaper paid police for information, it was revealed last night.
In a move likely to put further pressure on David Cameron to open an inquiry into allegations of phone hacking, News International, publishers of the Sunday tabloid, confirmed that it had passed information to Scotland Yard about payments made by the paper to police officers.
Mr Cameron came under mounting pressure from across the political divide during a day of dramatic developments. As more allegations were levelled at the News of the World, the Prime Minister denounced as “quite, quite shocking” claims that the voicemail of the murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler was hacked by a private investigator acting for the paper days after she went missing.
If true, Mr Cameron said, it would amount to “a truly dreadful act”, a sentiment echoed by ministers and MPs of all parties.
The Commons will stage an emergency three-hour debate today on whether an inquiry into phone hacking should be established.
Advertisement
It will be given impetus by claims last night that families of victims of the 7/7 bombings in London may have had their phones hacked.
And it was also revealed that the parents of the murdered Soham schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman were contacted by detectives investigating newspaper phone hacking. Officers from Scotland Yard’s Operation Weeting team have spoken to the parents of the two children, who were murdered by Ian Huntley in August 2002.
News International, which also publishes The Times, confirmed that it was aware of the suggestion that private investigators may have hacked phones during the Soham case.
The police inquiry is set to run for months if not years, with a team of 50 Scotland Yard detectives now working full-time on the investigation.
Sir Paul Stephenson, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, said that his officers would go wherever the evidence led them. He added that the allegations over the Milly Dowler case would have caused “awful distress” to her family.
Advertisement
Scotland Yard is believed to be considering increasing the number of officers on the hacking investigation. The Dowler and Soham allegations have widened the scope of the inquiry and the time-frame in which offences are thought to have occurred.
The chief executive of News International, Rebekah Brooks, who was editor of the Sunday tabloid when it covered the disappearances of Milly Dowler and the Soham girls, faced calls for her resignation last night.
Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, said that Ms Brooks should consider her position, adding that it was time for executives at News International “to start taking responsibility for this”.
But Ms Brooks said that she was determined to stay in her job and steer the company through the scandal. In a message to staff, she wrote: “We will face up to the mistakes and wrongdoing of the past and we will do our utmost to see that justice is done and those culpable will be punished.”
Last night the carmaker Ford withdrew advertising from the News of the World, saying that it “cares about the standards of behaviour of its own people and those it deals with externally”. Other advertisers, including the Halifax bank and the energy company npower, said that they were reviewing their advertising spending.
Advertisement
Meanwhile, Graham Foulkes, whose son David, 22, was killed on the Tube train at Edgware Road on July 7, 2005 said that he had been told by police that his phone may have been hacked.
He was told that his name, home address, ex-directory landline number and mobile phone number had all been found in the files of the private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, who was jailed in 2007 for phone hacking on behalf of the News of the World. The police were not able to say whether or not Mr Foulkes’s phone had been hacked.
Mr Foulkes told BBC News: “They phoned me at about seven o’clock this evening to say that during their investigations into the News of the World phone hacking . . . they’d come across a file dated 2005 and in that file were my personal details including my home address, my landline phone number, which is ex-directory, and my mobile phone number.
“In 2005, the press did descend upon us en masse. Some of the press, particularly the BBC and The Times, have been extremely supportive and responsible; at the other end of the spectrum that’s not been the case.”
He said that the officer had not been able to discuss any other cases involving the families of 7/7 victims, but that he understood there are “a very small number of cases, maybe a handful”.