?�Former News International chief executive faces the Commons culture, media and sport committee
? Read full coverage of all today's earlier hearings ? Rupert Murdoch, James Murdoch, Sir Paul Stephenson and John Yates ? here
Brooks would talk to Rupert Murdoch, on average, every other day, says Brooks in response to a question about how often she would have talked to her boss.
She said that her office "is" (was?) next to that of James Murdoch.
"I don't think you will find any editor on Fleet St that didn't feel that some headlines they had published had mistakes and I am no differnt to that," says Brooks in response to a question about whether she had any regrets about headlines that were published under her reign.
Good evening. This is Ben Quinn taking over the blog from Andy.
You can follow me on twitter at BenQuinn75
I'm finishing now. My colleague Ben Quinn will be taking over for the rest of the hearing.
Paul Farrelly is asking about Jon Chapman, the legal adviser who recently left the company. Did Chapman asks Harbottle & Lewis to sit on the evidence suggesting wrong-doing.
Brooks says Harbottle & Lewis are a respected legal firm. Chapman was a respected lawyer. He would not have done that.
Q: Chapman seems to be the fall guy? Did he act alone?
Brooks says Chapman would say, if asked, that when they looked at the file, they would have felt that the Harbottle & Lewis letter saying there was no evidence of wrongdoing was correct.
Q: Did you ask other editors in 2009 not to give the phone hacking story much play?
Brooks says she would have discussed industry matters with people like Paul Dacre. But she does not recall specifically phoning him up to discuss this.
(That seems to be a reference to this story.)
Q: Did you ever tell Boris Johnson that this would not be over until Alan Rusbridger, the Guardian editor, was on his knees?
"Absolutely not," says Brooks.
Outside the hearing, the Tories have now issued a statement about the "informal advice" that Neil Wallis provided to the party before the general election. This is from a party spokesman.
There have been some questions about whether the Conservative Party employed Neil Wallis. We have double-checked our records and are able to confirm that neither Neil Wallis nor his company has ever been contracted by the Conservative Party, nor has the Conservative Party made payments to either of them.It has been drawn to our attention that he may have provided Andy Coulson with some informal advice on a voluntary basis before the election. We are currently finding out the exact nature of any advice. We can confirm that apart from Andy Coulson, neither David Cameron nor any senior member of the campaign team were aware of this until this week.
And this is what Labour's Ivan Lewis is saying about the revelation.
This revelation raises further serious concerns about David Cameron's judgement in appointing Andy Coulson. He must now come clean about Neil Wallis' role and activities in supporting Andy Coulson, both in his capacity as director of communications for the Tory Party, and then the Prime Minister.
Paul Farrelly is asking questions now.
Q: Are there any legal ways of converting mobile numbers into addresses? When you used an investigator to do this, did you have a public interest defence?
Brooks says that when she used private detectives, it was in relation to Sarah's Law. That was a public interest matter.
Q: Was the phone number you tried to obtain related to a suspect paedophile?
Brooks says she cannot remember the details. But she was using private detectives at the time to trace paedophiles. The Observer (where Farrelly worked before 2001) also used private detectives.
Q: After the arrest of Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire, two myths were peddled by News International; that Goodman was a rogue reporter, and the Mulcaire was not really active. The Milly Dowler story demolished that.
Brooks says Farrelly is saying these are myths now. But they that was not what people thought at the time.
Damian Collins, the Conservative MP, is asking the questions now.
Q: In 2003, when you gave evidence to the committee, you cited the Milly Dowler case as an example of a story where the police worked well with the NoW.
Brooks says in 2003 she did not know what she knows now. In the light of that, her comments may sound ridiculous. But she thought the press had "tried to respect the privacy of the families". Fleet Street had come together to respect the privacy of the families.
The new allegations, "if true", contradict what she said then.
Q: When did you hear about the Milly Dowler allegations?
When the Guardian published its story, she says.
Her instant reaction "was one of shock and disgust".
When she heard the story, she send the Dowler family an "unreserved apology".
She also wrote to Surrey police to say that if they had any information to support these allegations, they should share them with the police and News International's own internal investigation.
She recently received a reply. She was told the police could not give her information because it was part of a criminal investigation.
Back in the committee, Jim Sheridan is asking questions.
Q: What did Brooks mean when she told journalists at the NoW that in a year's time they would understand why the company needed to close the paper?
Brooks says she has no "visibility" in relation to the documents in the possession of the police. After a year or more people will get to the bottom of what happened.
Q: During the Tommy Sheridan perjury case the court was told that News International emails had got lost?
Brooks says the emails were not lost.
Q: Why haven't the retrieved emails been given to Sheridan's defence team?
Brooks says there was a problem with suppliers in India.
Outside the hearing, following evidence from Sir Paul Stephenson, the outgoing Metropolitan police commissioner to the home affairs committee earlier, the Met has released more details about the number of people in its press office who have worked for News International. Here's its statement.
In the Directorate of Public Affairs (DPA) there are 45 press officers as well as a number of non-press office roles. There are a total of 68 staff roles. Of this total number ten people have previously worked or taken work experience at News International newspapers. Of these ten half had also worked at other non News International owned national or London newspapers. In addition four other members of DPA have previously worked or taken work experience from non News International owned national or London newspapers. Only four people have worked for national or London newspapers within the last five years. The majority of all the work undertaken at the papers was on a freelance casual shift basis and did not overlap with their current employment.
Louse Mensch, the Tory MP, is asking questions now.
Q: Piers Morgan in his book, the Insider, writes about using phone hacking. He says this was behind the Mirror's scoop of the year. (For more on this, read Guido Fawkes.) Isn't it the case that everyone was using hacking?
Brooks says after Operation Motorman all papers had to accept that they had gone to far in using private detectives.
Q: Were payments to the police widespread across Fleet Street?
Brooks says in her evidence to the culture committee in 2003, she was going to explain what she meant about paying the police. But the session was terminated.
She has clarified her point herself.
She has never paid a police officer herself. She has never knowingly sanctioned a payment to a police officer.
In her experience, the information to papers from the police comes "free of charge".
Q: If you thought these practices were endemic in the industry, why did you not think they were going on at the NoW?
Brooks says, after the What Price Privacy? report, there was a culture change in Fleet Street.
Watson is still asking questions.
Q: Do you have any regrets?
Of course, says Brooks. What happened to Milly Dowler's family was "abhorrent".
Back to the committee, Watson is asking about Glenn Mulcaire.
Brooks says she did not know Mulcaire worked for the NoW when she was editor. She did not hear his name until 2006.
Q: Did you ever receive information for the paper from him?
Brooks says, now that she knows what she knows, she realises that he was involved with the paper from the late 1990s. At his trial the judge said he did legitimate work for the paper.
Q: Did you have any contact with Jonathan Rees?
Brooks says she knows a lot about Jonathan Rees now. He rejoined the NoW in 2005 or 2006.
Q: Is it odd that, having been jailed for a serious offence, he was rehired?
Brooks says this is extraordinary.
Q: Who hired him?
Brooks says she does not know.
Q: Who signed his contract?
She does not know.
Q: Why haven't you investigated this?
Brooks says the internal investigation has focused on phone hacking. Brooks worked for other people, including Panorama.
She does not know what he did for the NoW.
Q: Isn't it incredible that, as chief executive, you did not know?
It may be incredible. But it is the truth.
If you hit refresh, you can follow the hearing live with our video stream at the top of the page.
The BBC are just breaking the news that the Conservative party has announced that Neil Wallis, the former News of the World deputy editor, provided informal advice to the party before the general election.
Brooks says that until evidence emerged during the course of civil litigation, she did not realise the extent of phone hacking.
Part of the problem is that News International do not have all the paperwork. The police have it, she says.
Tom Watson is asking questions now. He says the scope of his questions will be limited because he does not want to prejudice any legal proceedings.
Q: Why did you sack Tom Crone?
Brooks says Crone mainly worked for the News of the World. That has closed.
Q: But there are still News of the World legal cases to deal with?
Brooks says Crone was the day-to-day legal manager. But the paper closed.
Q: As a journalist how extensively did you deal with private detectives?
Brooks says the information commissioner looked into this. He found that Take a Break magazine used private detectives more than the Sun. The Observer was one of the top four papers using detectives.
Paul Farrelly interrupts. He says he used to work for the Observer. It was not in the top four.
Brooks says it may have been in the top six.
Rebekah Brooks has begun her evidence to MPs on the culture, media and sport committee now.
Here is a reading list for this hearing.
? Nick Davies's list of the questions that Rebekah Brooks has to answer.
? The Observer's list of the questions that Brooks has to answer.
? The Guardian's Janine Gibson on where Brooks went wrong.
? A profile of Brooks in the Daily Mail.
Brooks began with an apology to the victims of phone hacking.
In brief, here was Andrew Sparrow's view of the Murdochs:
Rupert Murdoch
"Most humble day of my career" was the soundbite he gave us, but humility wasn't really what anyone will remember. It will be the short, gruff answers, delivered as if he was not entirely clear what had been going on. Was it because he's 80 and he can't hear very well any more, or was it because he didn't really want to engage? Probably a mixture of the two. But he did seem unflappable when the "foam hacker" struck. Tough bugger.
James Murdoch
Evasive, but in a way that was smooth and articulate. He kept telling the MPs how good their questions were and launching into long answers that weren't always particularly illuminating.
And here were his key points from the Murdoch hearing:
That was meant to last an hour. It lasted three. Here are the main points.
? Rupert Murdoch has had a plate of shaving foam thrust in his face by a protester. The attacker has been arrested. Labour's Chris Bryant said that attack was "despicable" and a contempt of parliament.
? Rupert Murdoch said that giving evidence to the committee was "the most humble day of my career".
? The Murdochs confirmed that News International carried on paying some of Glenn Mulcaire's legal fees after his conviction for phone hacking in 2007. One MP suggested that this could be interpreted as News International funding a cover-up (because Mulcaire has been fighting demands that he should disclose full details of his phone-hacking activities). James Murdoch said that he was "surprised and shocked" when he heard about these payments. Rupert Murdoch said that he would stop future payments, as long as there were no contractual reasons why he should not do so.
? Murdoch said that he did not feel that he was personally responsible for what went wrong at the company.
? The Murdochs said they had "no plans" to set up a Sunday title. They conceded that they had discussed this, but they said it was not priority.
? James Murdoch said that he agreed to the �700,000 payment to Gordon Taylor because he thought it was a hangover from the original court case.
? Rupert Murdoch said he did not find out about the Taylor payment - which has been perceived as hush money - until it was publicised in the Guardian.
? Rupert Murdoch said that he thought that the phone-hacking matter had been settled after 2007. "The police ended their investigations and I was told that News International conducted an internal review," he said. (Interestingly, Murdoch is blaming the police for not investigating the matter more thoroughly in 2006. But last week Peter Clarke, the officer in charge of that investigation, said he could not carry it out properly because News International did not co-operate.)
? Rupert Murdoch played down his influence on his British newspaper editors. He did not even phone the editor of the News of the World every week, he says. Of all his papers, he pays most attention to the Wall Street Journal, he said.
? Rupert Murdoch said in his opening statement: "I hope our contribution to Britain will one day ... be recognised."
? Rupert Murdoch said Downing Street asked to him to use the back door when he visited David Cameron at No 10 after the general election.
? Rupert Murdoch said that he hoped to repair his relationship with Gordon Brown.
Full coverage of all the day's previous events here
We are having technical problems with our previous live blog, so we have started this one in its place.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/blog/2011/jul/19/rebekah-brooks-mps
John Boehner Sarah Palin Sean Hannity Harry Reid Mitch McConnel
No comments:
Post a Comment