Dowlers call for Rebekah Brooks to resign
The family of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler has called on former News of the World editor Rebekah Brooks to resign from her post as chief executive of News International.
The murdered schoolgirl’s parents were told in April that their daughter’s mobile phone may have been hacked in the days after her disappearance.
Now Milly’s family has called on Rebekah Brooks to “do the honourable thing” and quit.
They urged the News International chief executive to leave her post as lawyers claimed Surrey Police knew about Milly’s phone being hacked almost a decade before relatives found out.
Speaking after a Whitehall meeting with Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, family lawyer Mark Lewis said his clients “take the view that Rebekah Brooks should do the honourable thing”.
After the meeting, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg today stepped up the pressure on Rupert Murdoch, urging him to reconsider his takeover bid for broadcaster BSkyB.
“Do the decent and sensible thing, and reconsider, think again, about your bid for BSkyB,” he urged the News Corp chief.
“I would simply say to him, ‘look how people feel about this, look how the country has reacted with revulsion to the revelations’.
“Listening to Bob, Sally and Gemma Dowler, it reminds you that it is innocent families like them who have paid a very heavy price for truly grotesque journalistic practices, which are simply beneath contempt.”
Mr Clegg appealed to the media mogul to do the “decent and sensible thing” and think again in the light of the latest disclosures in the News of the World phone hacking scandal.
Read more: News of the World targets Met Police detective
Both Mr Lewis and former Scotland Yard deputy assistant commissioner Brian Paddick said Surrey Police should have told the Dowler family that they may have been targeted.
He told the press conference: “Apparently Surrey Police knew at the time that the phone was being hacked into. Why they didn’t tell the family at all… is a matter for Surrey Police to answer.
What it does show is that this relationship between the police and the press is not restricted to the Metropolitan Police.”
Royal allegations
In other developments the BBC has reported that information about members of the Royal Family may have been sold to the News of the World by a police officer working for the Royal Protection Squad.
A spokesman for the Royal Family told Channel 4 News he would not comment on the reports while there was an ongoing police investigation.
Former News of the World royal editor Clive Goodman was arrested on Friday along with the newspaper’s ex-editor Andy Coulson.
