Keir Starmer QC, Director of Public Prosecutions
Rose Court, 2 Southwark Bridge
London,SE1 9HS6 January 2011
As you know, News International has suspended a senior executive in light of ongoing allegations about the News of the World’s illegal phone hacking activities.
A Parliamentary enquiry has found News Corp guilty of “collective amnesia” when it comes to phone hacking. It also found it “inconceivable” that others were not involved in the practice.
News Corp’s response to this was to say that that phone hacking involved a single “rogue reporter”.
Their own actions now prove beyond reasonable doubt that this was not true.
Only court disclosures of the Mulcaire evidence file have led them to act. They otherwise had no intention. They ascribed all the illegal activity to a single rogue reporter.
On December 10 last year, when announcing that Scotland Yard’s most recent hacking inquiry had found no evidence of crime, you said that you would consider setting up panel of police and prosecutors if new evidence came to light.
On December 15 last year, when yet more new evidence came to light – as it has done pretty much every week for several years now (on this occasion, the Sienna Miller case) – Nick Davies of the Guardian asked your office (privately) for some points of clarification:
1. At the time of the original police investigation, in 2006, did Scotland Yard provide the CPS with material which they seized from Glenn Mulcaire which related to his investigations of Sienna Miller, Jude Law and their associates?
2. At the time of the original police investigation, in 2006, did Scotland Yard provide the CPS with a document which they seized from Glenn Mulcaire in which he agreed to engage in ‘electronic intelligence and eavesdropping’ and to supply the News of the World with daily transcripts of the messages of a list of named targets from ‘political, royal and showbiz/entertainment?
3. Will the evidence referred to by Sienna Miller’s lawyers be assessed by the panel of police officers and prosecutors referred to in the DPP’s statement of December 10 2010 with a view to deciding whether a new investigation should take place?
In the intervening three weeks, you have not answered – indeed you have not addressed – any of the questions.
As MPs and victims of these crimes, we now ask you publicly: please would you answer these simple questions of fact?
As the edifice of lies which has been allowed to shield these sordid events for so long begins truly to crumble, there will be as few places for the complicit to hide as for the criminal. Now is the time for you to establish the panel and set up a real investigation that you promised to consider.
That way, there is the slight possibility that the non-metropolitan police and the judicial system may be able to emerge from the ruins of this democratic disaster with at least a scintilla of credibility.
Yours sincerely
Tom Watson
Member of Parliament for West Bromwich East
Tags: hacking, News Corp, sienna miller, Tom Watson
Considering how deep Tom was, as part of Gordon’s Black Ops team, he’s hardly in any position to criticise Coulson. Glass houses and stones, chaps.
Fubar seems to be suggesting that these legitimate questions would be better sought through hacking and burglary. How strange.
I think the questions are perfectly straight forward and the DPP should simply answer them.