Senior Labour figure expecting arrests within days

Pamorama expose introduces security dimension

Alex Marunchak

Complete silence from Daily Telegraph yet again this morning.

Met ‘snowed under’ with hacking leads

Yesterday, a senior source within the Labour Party confided to The Slog, “I am confidently expecting the first arrests during the next few days” in relation to the illegal use of surveillance by the media. I understand, however, that the Sue Akers enquiry is ‘snowed under’ with what now appear to be ‘thousands’ of cases of email interception and  phone-message hacking related to the Glenn Mulcaire case. So the many others in Fleet Street anxious about their past close relationships with ‘private detectives’ can rest easy for the time being. The Daily Telegraph this morning retains its extraordinary silence on the matter.

Some impetus was given to the call for a more robust Met inquiry by last night’s Panorama programme. Although not covering misuse of technology beyond the NotW in Ireland, the victim was a one-time army intelligence officer. Why, we wonder, was a right-wing Irish tabloid editor interested in his activities – and who tipped the journalists off that his emails would be revealing?

Marunchak left Newscorp in 2006, and the officer concerned, Ian Hurst, is no longer an active undercover operative. Intriguingly, however, Mr Hurst said (my italics):

“The BBC has shown me documents which contained parts of emails between me and a number of other people. This person was paid by News International to hack into my computer, and it is clear that British security have been aware for a number of years that I was being hacked for a sustained period.”

It is inconceivable that, having discovered this, Britain’s security forces did nothing. They must have known, in pretty short order, who was hacking Hurst – yet they did nothing. Why wasn’t the NotW prosecuted?

We come back again here to what The Slog still thinks is the most important relationship in this whole case: that existing between Andy Coulson (NotW editor) and former anti-terrorist policeman Andy Hayman. As one of the Met’s top men protecting the capital city from IRA splinter-group and Islamist attack, Hayman – we must presume – had been party to this knowledge about Ian Hurst.

If so, he needs to explain why he did nothing to charge or accuse Newscorp – for whom he later went to work.

During Tommy Sheridan’s perjury trial in Scotland, Andy Coulson denied possessing compromising information about the policeman who led the inquiry into the illegal hacking….one Andy Hayman. But during the period in question – 2006, the height of the Goodman/Mulcaire scandal – senior Met Officers and Newscorp UK management dined together eleven times. Having asked us all to believe that as NotW editor he “knew nothing” about phone hacking, Mr Coulson now asks us to accept his ‘word’ that at none of those eleven dining trysts did his path cross (as editor) with Hayman (the senior cop).  “I think I once had a cup of tea with him” Coulson told the Scottish Court.

In fact, viewed in the light of the later collapse of Newscorp’s ludicrous ‘one lone journalist’ defence, some of Coulson’s Scottish testimony at the time now looks decidedly sick.

The Court heard that Glenn Mulcaire’s company, “Nine Consultancy” had been used so often, ‘Coulson had once asked a head of a department to reduce the money the paper was paying the company’. But Coulson insisted that this was his only knowledge of Nine, and that, in relation to Mr Mulcaire, “I never met him, spoke to him or emailed him.” Tommy Sheridan’s following remark – that as the NotW was paying Nine Consultancy £105,000 a year, he as Editor should have known rather more about the company – is pertinent to say the least. But it seems that this was a six-figure Murdoch supplier who didn’t even warrant a cup of tea. I’m not sure old Roop would approve of that as a model of budgetary control.

Those involved in the Sheridan case must now be wondering if Coulson lied under oath….and sent Big Tommy to prison for three years. Certainly, Coulson denied in Court having ‘anything on’ Hayman, but the Channel 4 Dispatches investigation of last year raised this as a real possibility. While not confirming it, the Panorama edition last night supported the idea. As John Whittingdale, the Chairman of the Commons select committee on privacy noted:

“There was simply no enthusiasm among Scotland Yard to go beyond the cases involving Mulcaire and Goodman. To start exposing widespread tawdry practices in that newsroom was a heavy stone that they didn’t want to try to lift.”

We may now – five years on – be starting to get at precisely why there was so little enthusiasm. And I’m betting that it wasn’t overwork.

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For David Cameron and his immediate entourage – and no less for Jeremy Hunt – Hackgate has gone in just sixty days from denial of the guilt of  one Number Ten employee to a many-headed full-blown scandal involving the Police, CPS, security services, media set, monopolies commission and political class of the United Kingdom.

At the very least, somebody with a tad more bite than Andrew Marr – Ian Hislop, for example – needs to drag our bright-eyed Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt in front of a television camera, to ask why he is approving a major takeover by a company with so many dodgy practices and allegedly corrupt relationships.

Somebody also needs to ask Opposition Leader Ed Miliband why he allowed ex-Murdoch favourite Tom Baldwin to email all Labour MPs with the order to ‘lay off Murdoch’….and why (having avoided asking a PMQ for weeks) Ed seems happy for Labour MP Chris Bryant to take the heat by asking all the desperately awkward questions.

As a result of David Cameron’s decision to hire Andy Coulson as his Head of Communications, the people on trial by public opinion now include nearly everyone in News International, Westminster and Whitehall. That Cameron’s decision was at best naive has become a millstone he will carry forever.

Were any further proof needed of this, harken unto the briefings flying about yesterday among the Coalition’s inner circle. Ooooooooh no, it wasn’t the PM’s idea…..William Hague was the initial Coulson contact. Nooooooooooo said the Hague camp, William merely suggested his name to George Osborne – George was the one who persuaded Dave to go for it. Aaaaaaaahem said the Treasury, I think you’ll find the initial idea came from Rebekah Brooks direct to Mr Cameron…..

Andy Coulson may be about to become the first scandal-flame in history who knew nothing and nobody – and went to prison as a result of it. Now that would be something for the EU Court of Human Rights to get its teeth into.