Will we ever see part 2 of the Leveson inquiry?
Posted by: Dr John Jewell
With the news yesterday that Dan Evans, a former journalist at the News of the World and Sunday Mirror, has received a 10 month suspended sentence after being convicted of two counts of phone hacking, making illegal payments to officials and perverting the course of justice, we saw the latest episode in the long running saga of everyday tabloid folk. Following so soon after the conviction of Andy Coulson and the acquittal of Rebekah Brooks one could be forgiven for assuming that the whole business was done and dusted. Not a bit of it. As Julian Petley has written, ‘eleven more trials are due to take place involving twenty current or former Sun and News of the World journalists, who are accused variously of making illegal payments to public officials, conspiring to intercept voicemail, and accessing data on stolen mobile phones.’
In addition to this we learned in June that Scotland Yard had officially told Rupert Murdoch of their intention to interview him as part of their inquiry into allegations of crime at the newspapers. The Guardian revealed that Murdoch was first contacted in 2013 but the police ceded to his lawyers request that any interrogation should wait until the Coulson – Brooks trial had finished.
All of this seems to suggest that the second part of the Leveson Inquiry will not take place. It seems to have escaped the attention of most but when the Prime Minister announced the official inquiry into phone hacking in July 2011 it was to have been in two parts. The report on the first part into the culture, practices and ethics of the press appeared in November 2012 and has, of course, been the subject of much debate and controversy ever since. The second part, if it happens, will consider the extent of unlawful or improper conduct within News International and other media organisations. It will also ‘examine the way in which any relevant police force investigated allegations relating to News International, and whether the police received corrupt payments or were otherwise complicit in misconduct’. However, the key factor hindering the progress of this investigation is the stipulation that, ‘part 2 of the Inquiry cannot commence until the current police investigations and any subsequent criminal proceedings have been completed.’
Indeed, in May 2012 Lord Leveson himself suggested that part 2 may never happen and predicted, accurately as it turns out, that ‘If there are [prosecutions for phone-hacking] it is likely that the process of pre-trial disclosure and trial will be lengthy so that Part 2 of this Inquiry will be delayed for very many months if not longer.’ He continued, ‘that inquiry will involve yet more enormous cost (both to the public purse and the participants); it will trawl over material then more years out of date and is likely to take longer than the present Inquiry which has not over focussed on individual conduct.’
This view disappointed John Whittingdale, the Tory MP who chaired the Commons culture, media and sport select committee inquiry into hacking at the News of the World. His report in 2012 concluded that Rupert Murdoch was, ‘not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of major international company‘. Moreover, it stated that Les Hinton, former executive chairman of News Corporation, Colin Myler, the final editor of the News of the World and Tom Crone, the newspaper’s head of legal affairs, deliberately misled and withheld truth from the parliamentary enquiry into phone hacking.
Speaking at the launch of the Free Speech Network, in November 2012 Wittingdale said, ‘my real regret – one of the key things I wanted Lord Justice Leveson to look into – was how it was that the News of the World newsroom appeared to allow this to go on… but also how the police sat around for four years and did nothing. Those are two things which Lord Justice Leveson may never examine. Part two of the inquiry, I hear, may not ever be occurring. Therefore, it seems very strange that actually the most important questions surrounding the hacking scandal may never be properly looked into.’
Like Whittingdale, one would think that the role of the Metropolitan police in the affair needed serious official examination. To be fair, Leveson did interview John Yates, the Met’s former assistant commissioner, and cleared him of any corruption but allegations that senior staff in the police enjoyed a mutually beneficial relationship with the big players in News International clearly have credence. It is a fact that Andy Hayman, the former Assistant Commissioner who oversaw Scotland Yard’s original 2005-06 phone hacking investigation, was later employed as a columnist at the Times. It is a fact that John Yates, who advised against reopening the case in 2009 was involved in securing jobs at the Met for Neil Wallis, former deputy head of the News of the World, and his daughter. A little remembered independent report by former parliamentary commissioner Elizabeth Filkin in 2012 concluded that the police investigations into hacking were undermined by ‘cosy relationships’ and concluded, ‘the close relationship between some senior members of the Met and some sections of the media compromises the capacity of both those institutions to scrutinise the activities of the other.’
But perhaps there is no need for the second inquiry, given public awareness about police practices and reservations about costs and resources. Also, the Leveson report of 2012 made clear that police decisions made concerning phone hacking between 2006 -210 were wrong and there were a series of ‘poor decisions, poorly executed’ which had added to the notion that ‘closeness between the Met Police and News International made officers reluctant to fully investigate hacking’. Leveson did not leave it there, he criticised the Met for not informing those who may have been victims of hacking. He criticised the ‘incredibly swift’ dismissals of fresh allegations in 2009. He highlighted the champagne dinners enjoyed together by newspaper executives and senior policemen.
And in the final analysis he concluded: In reality, I am satisfied that I have seen no basis for challenging at any stage the integrity of the police, or that of the senior police officers concerned.
In the light of this, what would be the point of part 2?
Note: An edited, slightly different, version of this piece appears in the Conversation.
