News Corp board shocked at evidence of payments to police, says former DPP

By Owen Bowcott, legal affairs correspondent, via guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 19 July 2011

Lord Macdonald tells committee it took him 'three to five minutes' to decide NoW emails had to be passed to police. Lord Macdonald was in charge of the CPS when the phone-hacking prosecution of the NoW’s royal correspondent took place.

"Blindingly obvious" evidence of corrupt payments to police officers was found by the former director of public prosecutions, Lord Macdonald, when he inspected News of the World emails, the home affairs select committee was told. Explaining how he had been called in by solicitors acting for Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation board, Lord Macdonald said that when he inspected the messages it took him between "three to five minutes" to decide that the material had to be passed to police. "The material I saw was so blindingly obvious that trying to argue that it should not be given to the police would have been a hard task. It was evidence of serious criminal offences."

He first showed it to the News Corp board in June this year. "There was no dissent," he recalled. "They were stunned. They were shocked. I said it was my unequivocal advice that it should be handed to the police. They accepted that." That board meeting, the former DPP said, was chaired by Rupert Murdoch. Lord Macdonald shortly afterwards gave the material to Assistant Commissioner Cressida Dick at the Metropolitan police. The nine or 10 emails passed over led to the launch of Operation Elveden, the police investigation into corrupt payments to officers for information. Lord Macdonald, who had been in charge of the Crown Prosecution Service when the phone-hacking prosecution of the NoW's royal correspondent took place, said he had only been alerted to the case due to the convention that the DPP is always notified of crimes involving the royal family.

Members of the committee were highly critical of the CPS's narrow definition of what constituted phone hacking, claiming that it was at odds with the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. Mark Reckless, the Conservative MP for Rochester, said that the original police investigation was hindered by the advice from the CPS that phone hacking was only an offence if messages had been intercepted before they were listened to by the intended recipient. However, Reckless said, a clause in the RIPA makes it an offence to hack in to messages even if they have already been heard. Keir Starmer, the current DPP, said that the police had been told that "the RIPA legislation was untested". Listening to messages before they had been heard by the intended recipient was illegal, the police were told, but the question of whether intercepting them afterwards constituted a crime was "untested", he said.

Mark Lewis, the solicitor who has followed the scandal since its start, said he was the first person to lose his job over the affair when the firm in which he was a partner said it no longer wished him to pursue other victims' claims. Lewis also told MPs that he had been threatened by lawyers acting for John Yates, the former assistant commissioner at the Metropolitan police, because of comments he had made about phone hacking. "I have copies of a letter from Carter Ruck [solicitors] threatening to sue me on behalf of John Yates," Lewis told the home affairs select committee. He said the Guardian and the Labour MP Chris Bryant had also received threats of being sued. "The costs of the action were paid for by the Metropolitan Police, by the taxpayer," he added. Lewis said the reason for the investigation taking so long was not due solely to the police. "The DPP seems to have got it wrong and needs to be helped out," he said.

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Rupert Murdoch attacked at phone-hacking hearing
by John Plunkett and Jane Martinson via guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 19 July 2011 17.24 BST

Select committee brought to halt as activist attempts to hit News Corp chief in face with paper plate covered in shaving foam

The Murdochs' appearance before MPs for a grilling about the phone-hacking scandal was brought to a dramatic halt after an activist attempted to hit Rupert Murdoch in the face with a paper plate covered in shaving foam. Murdoch's wife Wendi Deng, who was sitting behind her husband at the culture, media and sport committee hearing, leapt up to defend her husband and appeared to hit out at the attacker as security guards and police rushed across the room to apprehend him. The attack happened just before 5pm on Tuesday and the News Corp chairman and chief executive was back answering MPs' questions within 20 minutes, having removed his foam-spattered suit jacket.

Murdoch's assailant, who was sitting four rows back in the committee meeting room at Portcullis House near the Houses of Parliament, apparently identified himself on Twitter shortly before the attack as a standup comic and UK Uncut activist called Jonnie Marbles. Marbles appears to have tweeted moments before he invaded the hearing. "It is a far better thing that I do now than I have ever done before #splat," he wrote on the social media network.

Moments after the committee chairman, John Whittingdale MP, suspended the meeting, a man wearing a checked shirt was seen outside the meeting room at the House of Commons in handcuffs. Cries of "no, no," could be heard as the man ran towards Rupert Murdoch, who was sitting in front of MPs on the committee alongside his son James. "He was sitting four rows back," said Guardian journalist Jane Martinson, who was among the reporters in the room when the attack took place. "He walked calmly to the front and smacked it in Rupert's face." Marbles had earlier tweeted: "I'm actually in this committee and can confirm: Murdoch is Mr Burns." He added: "Rupert Murdoch appears to be going senile." He also tweeted: "It might be quicker if Baby Murdoch simply listed all of the things that he does know. "One gets the sense that they haven't really done the required reading ahead of their presentation. Think they may fail this module."

Marbles describes himself on his Twitter page as an "activist, comedian, father figure and all-round nonsense. Tweeting in an impersonal capacity." But UK Uncut moved swiftly to distance itself from the invader. "The pie in Murdoch's face was NOT a UK Uncut action, everyone!" it tweeted soon after. Martinson added: "The man lobbed a plate of shaving foam into Murdoch's face at point-blank range. There was an astonishing reaction from Wendi, who, sitting behind her husband, immediately returned fire. "James looked stunned, several members of room gasped, but Wendi then sat on the desk calmly wiping foam from her husband's face. There was foam all over her blue-painted toes as well as two police officers who immediately grabbed him. There was shock that he got the foam in given the tight security. Another man with a long beard was also questioned. "She added: "All the press were kept in an overspill room as the committee resumed. I'm not sure how the foam man hid the paper plate. He was wearing black combat trousers and walked straight past me from the back row where the public was sitting to within inches of Murdoch. "Wendi was on her feet lobbing the plate back at her husband's assailant before James got up. Another woman – small and dark-haired – was the one who accosted the assailant first."

Labour MP Tom Watson, one of the members of the select committee, told Murdoch: "Your wife has a very good left hook." Louise Mensch, a Conservative MP and fellow select committee member, said Murdoch had shown "huge guts" in being willing to carry on. Another Labour MP, Chris Bryant, described the attack as "just despicable". He said witnesses should not be treated in such a manner and described it as contempt of parliament. Associates of Marbles said he "lives and breathes politics" and had been involved in previous UK Uncut protests.