Latest on phone hacking makes ‘amazing reading’

Roy Greenslade has refined his accusation about News International snooping on Select Committee members who were investigating them but it still makes pretty amazing reading.

He says he’s been told that in 2009 senior figures at News International told staff working at the paper – investigative reporters, snappers, private investigators, freelancers – to see what they could dig up on every single MP then sitting on the Culture and Media Select Committee. 

Mr Greenslade says that after a few days (it could be three or ten or something in between, he’s not sure) there were protests from News International staff at the instruction and the across the board snooping was stopped. Although as you can see from logs from the private detective Derek Webb, in Tom Watson’s case that wasn’t the last time covert surveillance was tried on him.

Back in 2010, the former Plaid Cymru MP and former Media committee member, Adam Price, claimed that the MPs on the committee had “held back” from investigating News International too deeply for fear they might be turned over themselves.

All this as Lord Justice Leveson’s inquiry formally gets under way at the Royal Courts of Justice and the judge warns that he doesn’t want people who criticise the press being intimidated.

Robert Jay QC told the inquiry that at least 28 News of the World journalists commissioned work from the phone hacker Greg Mulcaire and it was “at the very least a thriving cottage industry” at the newspaper.

Quite how the inquiry will be able to deal with snippets like this from the police investigation once individuals are charged and facing court I’m not quite sure.