Met chiefs face grilling by MPs over phone hacking

The Met’s Assistant Commissioner, John Yates, is to appear before MPs on the Home Affairs Committee again amid calls for his resignation for allegedly lying to parliament.

He will face questions about why he declined the opportunity to reopen the police investigation in 2009 when allegations surfaced that phone hacking at the News of the World was more widespread than previously acknowledged.

On Monday, AC Yates denied being asked to review his force’s original phone-hacking investigation from 2006, which resulted in NoW royal editor Clive Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire being jailed.

In a letter to the committee, he wrote: “In relation to events that took place in 2009, I was provided with some considerable reassurance (and at a number of levels) that led me to a view that this case neither needed to be reopened or reviewed.”

But in the Commons Labour MPs Tom Watson and Chris Bryant accused AC Yates of misleading Parliament and said his position had become “untenable”.

Using parliamentary privilege, Mr Bryant said: “Assistant Commissioner Yates repeatedly lied to Parliament. Surely he should resign.”

Last week, Channel 4 News revealed that in 2009, AC Yates admitted that Met police officers who had been prosecuted for accepting cash from newspapers in exchange for information could still be working for the force.

Also due to appear before the Home Affairs Committee is Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers, who is leading the new investigation into phone hacking, and Andy Hayman, who was assistant commissioner at the time of the original probe which failed to uncover the scale of the scandal.

On Tuesday morning, Labour leader Ed Miliband meets the family of Milly Dowler, the murdered schoolgirl whose phone was allegedly hacked by the News of the World while she was missing.