"Morals more akin to the Mafia": Chris Huhne on the methods of the Murdoch empire

Chris Huhne says the public documents in the cases brought by three former Liberal Democrat ministers - Vince Cable, Norman Lamb and Huhne himself - show that phone-hacking was directed by News Group executives who had no journalistic role.

This hacking, claims Huhne in an article for Byline Times, had two objectives:

The first was to target political figures who were perceived to be unsympathetic to News and Murdoch in order to smooth the way for achieving the boss's is objectives. 

The second was to gather intelligence from the heart of government in order to further News's objectives, in particular, the purchase of the 61 per cent of Sky - BSkyB - that the Murdoch's family did not own. Murdoch wanted to stop ministers referring the bid for a time-consuming review - and possible veto - by the competition authorities.

The reason this is so important is because is because it is about using illegal information gathering for corporate purposes is such as spying and getting rid of opponents and obstacles.

Read the full article on Byline Times. It will 

Make thy two eyes like stars start from their spheres,

Thy knotted and combined locks to part,

And each particular hair to stand on end

Like quills upon the fretful porpentine.

The Joy of Six 1189

"Give or take the odd percentage point, and Sir John tries to persuade the media not to sensationalise small, meaningless poll movements, Labour has a solid lead of around 20 per cent over their Tory rivals. ... Parties in Downing Street during lockdown and the disastrous 49-day Truss premiership helped make up a lot of minds and the electorate don’t show any signs of forgetting or forgiving." John Curtice sees no signs of a Conservative revival in time for the next election.

John Jewell looks at three key moments in the phone-hacking scandal and at what happens next.

Mark Gatiss on the enduring appeal of the BBC’s Christmas ghost stories: "James’s stories do lend themselves very well to television shorts. They’re very clever short stories and, with the exception of ‘Casting the Runes’, they’re not epic. They’re very contained, which is very handy as you can achieve a lot with them on a small budget."

"For someone essentially leading the tempo and measuring impact of 50 other musicians, he made it look like he was doing all the work, sweating like he was carrying a grand piano single-handed up a flight of stairs. You looked at him more than you listened to the music." John Podhoretz on Maestro - and Leonard Bernstein.

The Gentle Author looks again at old photographs of London: "The slow exposures of these photographs included fine detail of inanimate objects, just as they also tended to exclude people who were at work and on the move but, in spite of this, the more I examine these pictures the more inhabited they become."

"The 'hobby horse' as we know it today is a children’s toy, a stick with a wooden horse’s head held between the legs and 'ridden” — but, in common with many activities and rituals we now relegate to children, hobby horses were once part of adult festivities. They were also particularly associated with Christmas time, and took a wider variety of forms than we see today. Francis Young argues that 'animal guising' customs offer important insights into British festive culture.

Vince Cable, Chris Huhne and Norman Lamb sue Sun and News of the World publisher over phone hacking

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Claiming an exclusive, the Guardian reports that three senior Liberal Democrat politicians, Vince Cable, Chris Huhne and Norman Lamb, are

suing the publisher of the Sun and the defunct News of the World, claiming that their phones were hacked for stories or to “exert political influence”, including when Rupert Murdoch was seeking approval for a takeover of BSkyB.

Journalists working at Murdoch’s newspapers are said to have unlawfully targeted the former business secretary Vince Cable as well as Chris Huhne, a former energy and climate change secretary, and Norman Lamb, a whip and sometime adviser to the then deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg.

The purpose of the attempts to access the men’s voicemail messages during their time in coalition with the Conservatives and to carry out other “unlawful information gathering” had been to source stories about them in order to “sell newspapers”, but to also influence political events, according to the claims lodged at the high court, which have been denied.

The report goes on to say that Vince Cable claims that between 27 July 2004 and 31 December 2011, a total of 383 calls were made by journalists at the Wapping headquarters of the Sun and News of the World, "the overwhelming majority of which he will infer were made for the purposes of unlawfully intercepting his voicemail messages".

Simon Hughes makes phone-hacking claim against the owners of the Daily Mail

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From the Guardian this evening:

The Daily Mail’s parent company is facing its first legal claim for phone hacking, after the former Liberal Democrat MP Sir Simon Hughes filed a case against the newspaper publisher.

Hughes is alleging that Associated Newspapers – the owner of the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday and MailOnline – misused his private information. He is expected to claim that the newspaper publisher employed a private investigator who improperly accessed his voicemail messages.

The paper says this is the first time the publisher of the Daily Mail has faced a legal claim based on allegations of voicemail interception.

Evan Harris speaks after settling his phone-hacking claim against Murdoch newspapers

Evan Harris didn't just make a statement to court as his claim against The Sun and the News of the World was settled, he made one outside court too.

And here it is.

In settling Evan Harris's claim, the owner of the papers, News Group Newspapers, made no admission of liability.

Evan Harris settles hacking claim against Murdoch newspapers

Yahoo! News reports that the former Liberal Democrat MP Dr Evan Harris has settled his claim for unlawful information gathering against News Group Newspapers, publishers of The Sun and the now-closed News of the World.

Dr Harris told the High Court that he believes some of his close friends and associates, including Vince Cable and former Labour deputy leader Tom Watson, received calls from NGN journalists which cannot be "explained by anything other than voicemail interception".

Representing Dr Harris, barrister David Sherborne read a statement to the court, as the claim was formally settled:

Mr Sherborne said Dr Harris "believes that disclosed documents show that private investigator activity – which he considers to be unlawful – was directed against Hugh Grant … a few days prior to Mr Grant giving evidence at the Leveson inquiry in November 2011".

He also said NGN had disclosed other documents which Dr Harris believes reveal that fellow former Liberal Democrat MP Sir Simon Hughes was "outed" by The Sun as bisexual based on an itemised phone bill said to have shown Sir Simon calling a gay chat line.

In settling the claim, NGN made no admission of liability in relation to The Sun or The News of the World

Simon Hughes wins phone-hacking damages from The Sun

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From the Guardian:

The publisher of the Sun has paid a substantial sum to settle a phone-hacking claim brought by the former Liberal Democrat MP Sir Simon Hughes, who claimed he was illegally targeted by reporters wanting to out his sexuality.

Speaking to Byline Investigates, Simon said:

‘This was to do with unlawful obtaining of phone bills by The Sun.

‘This explains what happened 15 years ago when The Sun came to me and said they had information about my relationships.

‘In this case, we know that it wasn’t just private investigators – it went right to the top. The people at the top were quite clearly involved.’

Byline Investigates also explains exactly what went on between Simon and The Sun.

In 2006 the paper had found out the numbers that he called frequently, as well as call times and durations:

The sensitive data was bought from a notoriously illegal private investigator firm called ELI.

At the beginning of the case, Hughes was shown this disclosure and was ‘deeply troubled and shocked.’

ELI (Express Locate International) was a private detective company, which has been linked in other litigation to phone hacking, and which sold illegally-acquired private and personal information to newspapers across Fleet Street.

In the middle of a leadership contest in January 2006, Trevor Kavanagh told Mr Hughes that they had obtained private and sensitive data, but did not reveal how.

Based on this, the journalist said the paper was going to publish a story that Hughes had engaged in homosexual activities.

Hughes ‘believed that with or without his agreement,’ The Sun would publish the story anyway, according to a statement read in open court.

He felt that ‘he had no choice but to cooperate and this resulted in a front page article on January 26 2006.’

The story ended-up misrepresenting Hughes’ sexual orientation.

Six of the Best 673

Energlyn Churchill says a more credible Labour leader than Jeremy Corbyn would help the Liberal Democrats. And he's right.

"Our social care system is a leaky bucket. Large chunks of cash invested in social care end up in the hands of private investors. Instead of simply pouring an endless stream of public funds at the problem, we urgently need to fix the bucket." Sarah Lyall tells us how to do it.

The effects of Britain's involvement in the slave trade are still with us, argues Chris Dillow.

Sophie Miskiw on her father, the tabloid journalist and phone-hacker.

"50 years after its UK release it reverberates way beyond the notoriety of Jane Birkin showing her bits on screen. Appropriately for a picture about perception and ambiguity, it plays very differently from the one I remember first seeing years ago." Anthony Quinn marks an important anniversary for Blow-Up.

Andy Dangerfield explores the lost rivers that flow beneath London.

Beyond Contempt: The inside story of the phone hacking trial by Peter Jukes

Beyond Contempt: The inside story of the phone hacking trial
Peter Jukes
Canbury Press, 2014, £8.99

The Old Bailey trial of Rebekah Brooks, Andy Coulson and others on charges of phone hacking ran from October 2013 to July 2014, attracting huge public interest.

Peter Jukes live tweeted the whole thing. That he was able to do so in an atmosphere where the defence was constantly on the lookout for prejudicial comment or coverage is a tribute to his fairness and stamina – and also to the courage of the trial judge, Mr Justice Saunders, in allowing him to do so.

Jukes needed courage too, suffering harassment from those ‘libertarians’ whose views somehow always coincide with the interests of wealthy corporations.

He takes us lightly through the complicated proceedings and provides character sketches of lawyers, witnesses and defendants. After reading Beyond Contempt, one has a clearer understanding of why it was that Brooks was acquitted and Coulson convicted.

A dramatist himself, Jukes sees many parallels between the courtroom and the theatre. Those who suspect performance in court has much effect on the verdict as the facts of the case will find nothing here to change their view.

Jukes also offers good advice to anyone tweeting from an event and seeking to offer factual coverage rather than opinion. Do not, he says, engage too much with your audience – particularly not with Louise Mensch.

You can buy Beyond Contempt from Amazon UK or direct from Canbury Press.

Yes to Leveson 2, no to Section 40

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Back in 2012 I wrote:

Lord Leveson has not produced his recommendations yet, and when he does many of us of a Liberal persuasion may not like them. But we can already say that his inquiry has been a great success. 

That is because it has laid bare the working of politicians and the media. We have heard editors, owners and politicians describing that they do under forensic questioning and on oath. 

It seems it was the US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis who first said "sunlight is the best disinfectant". He was right, but the Leveson Inquiry has done more than expose wrongdoing. It has been an education to those who have taken an interest in it, laying bare the culture of journalism and its relationship with the political world.

I stand by that today, which is why I support a 'Leveson 2' to make a public examination of the relationship between journalists and the police.

The arguments I have heard against it have all been special pleading by the press, who do not want their practices laid bare in public.

But the arguments I have heard against implementation of section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013 seem to me compelling. It is indeed a recommendation that those of us of a Liberal persuasion should not like.

This section would mean that any publication that declined to sign up with Impress, the new regulator funded by Max Mosley, would be liable to pay the costs for both sides in any libel actions against them, even if they won.

You only have to type that out to see what a nonsense it is.

We do not need more regulation of the press, but stricter application of the criminal law when they break it.

Which is why I say Yes to Leveson 2 and no to Section 40.

Alex Salmond and Rupert Murdoch

“@SnoozeInBrief: Yeah, an independent Scotland would see a completely new style of politics. #indyref pic.twitter.com/LP5ePulhCH” Lol or cry
— Kevin Maguire (@Kevin_Maguire) September 13, 2014

This tweet reminds me of something I blogged in 2012 after Alex Salmond refused to meet the Dalai Lama during his visit to Scotland:

I am instinctively sympathetic to the idea of small nations, but today's events have done nothing to make the prospect of an independent Scotland more attractive. 

They have reminded me of Alex Salmond's appearance before the Leveson Inquiry. You can read his evidence on the inquiry website, but this quote from a Daily Record report is telling: 

“I have no responsibility for broadcasting policy, I have no responsibility for plurality in the press but I do have a responsibility for jobs and investment in Scotland.” 

I don't find the idea that the provision of jobs in Scotland trumps concerns of media plurality or media ethics appealing. And if you heard Salmond you would have gained the impression that he would have little time for such considerations even if they were his legal responsibility. 

It is easy to imagine an independent Scotland, at least one with Salmond and the SNP in charge, being a little too keen to placate the powerful and unattractive, whether it is Rupert Murdoch or the Chinese government, out of a fear of losing jobs.

It also reminds me of this Herald report from the following year:

The police investigation into alleged misconduct by journalists in Scotland has effectively come to an end. 

Spending on Operation Rubicon has fallen to a trickle, and, by this summer, only three officers were working on the probe. 

Moreover, John McSporran, who was the senior investigating officer on the case, has retired from the force. In reference to Rubicon, 

McSporran said on his social media profile: "Retired at the end of this enquiry." ... 

During the Leveson inquiry, set up to examine the ethics of the press, the then chief constable of Strathclyde, Stephen House, said he had "no doubt" there were individuals in his force "who are in receipt of money from various people". 

As a result of the investigation, Bob Bird, the former editor of the Scottish edition of the News of the World, was charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice. 

Douglas Wight, news editor on the Sunday tabloid, was charged with perjury, conspiring to hack phones, and of multiple counts of conspiracy to obtain personal data. 

However, despite an initial flurry of activity, the work of Operation Rubicon now looks to be at an end.

All the people who told us that phone-hacking investigations would come to nothing

Let me see. There's:

• Mathew d'Ancona
• Guido Fawkes
• Boris Johnson
• Jenny Jones
• David Cameron
• Kit Malthouse

Chris Huhne on Rupert Murdoch's part in his downfall

Chris Huhne has an article in tomorrow's Guardian:

My endgame began when Neville Thurlbeck, the chief reporter of the now defunct News of the World, heard gossip that I was having an affair. Rather than cheapskating on the proposed investigation by hacking my phone, the News of the World put me under extensive surveillance by a retired policeman, a more expensive exercise.

He goes on to ask why News International prepared to invest so much to tail an opposition Liberal Democrat back in 2009:

Maybe it was coincidence, but that summer I was the only frontbencher who, with Nick Clegg's brave backing, called for the Metropolitan police to reopen the voicemail hacking inquiry into Rupert Murdoch's empire. 

Given that I was falling in love with someone who was not my wife, you might think that it was an act of folly to court Murdoch's hostility, but the journalist in me rebelled. Publish and be damned. If I was not in parliament to speak out when I saw an abuse, why was I there? 

The News of the World sparked the end of my marriage, but another Murdoch title, the Sunday Times, then groomed my ex-wife until she told them about the speeding points. The political editor bought dinners, sent flowers, offered breaks at smart hotels, and reassured her that she would not face any unpleasant consequences (such as prison). 

Four successive weeks as the splash in the Sunday Times ensured our joint prosecution. The Crown Prosecution Service loves a celebrity trial. It was the end of my political career, and it locked up my ex-wife too. She was just another "burned contact" for the Murdoch press.

Whatever you think of Chris Huhne's behaviour, his conclusion is correct:

Media ownership must be more diverse because it is the lifeblood of public debate. If competition policy is not enough, then we should have statutory limitations or even help for small media outfits (as other countries do). It is not only votes that make a democracy, but voices too.

Is this blog covered by the new press regulator?

I asked this question on Twitter yesterday and received answers varying from obviously yes to obviously no.

My suspicion is that nobody knows. The Leveson Report barely considered the internet and the new law arose from a deal done in the small hours by party leaders and pressure group representatives after a process resembling the change of prime minister in The Thick of It.

I suspect we shall have to wait for some case law to find out what the new legislation means. And recent experience suggests that the judges may not take the side of bloggers.

Six of the Best 333

"What badly needs debate is precisely how to regulate cross-media ownership better, and how to prevent semi-monopolies of influence from building up that subverts proper media balance - and prevents prime ministers paying court to one press baron and his acolytes in particular." David Boyle says the debate over Leveson is ignoring the most important question.

Simon Titley on Liberator's blog gives an account of the rise and fall of economic liberalism in the Liberal Democrats.

The Conservatives' A list did bring them more women candidates but made little difference in the areas of race and class, finds Michael Hill on British Politics and Policy at LSE.

"Viva Belarus!", a groundbreaking feature film from Polish director Krzysztof Lukaszewicz portraying the harsh life of nonconformist youth living under the regime of Alyaksandr Lukashenka in Belarus, premiered at Prague’s Febiofest on March 19. Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty interviews one of the screenwriters, Franak Viačorka.

Homes & Property examines the history of Camden's Mornington Crescent.

Parts of Paris are built on a dense network of underground tunnels, canals, reservoirs and vaults, reports Infra Net Lab.

Nick Clegg doesn't mention the war

Yesterday I called on the Liberal Democrat high command to come clean and tell us the real reason they are in favour of secret courts.

Today Nick Clegg's weekly email arrived. Eagerly I opened it. But nothing. Not a mention of secret courts.

It was worse than that.

The email was mostly about the Leveson proposals and the battle over whether and how we should legislate to implement them. It was quite long but, even so, we were referred to an article by Nick in The Times for a more detailed exposition of his views.

That was a big problem for me.

I am not concerned about referring people to a Murdoch paper. Increasingly these days, I find myself buying The Times rather than the Guardian.

The problem is that in order to read articles on the Times site you have to have paid a subscription first. So Nick's email is telling most of its recipients that there is more information available on this, but they cannot read it. That is only going to put people's back up.

You would hope that the team around the party leader would have grasped this simple point, but apparently not.

Liberal Burblings did not like Nick's email either, but made his point more succinctly than me.

Six of the Best 281

A Scottish Liberal offers a cool and measured response to Nick Clegg's Conference speech.

"The challenge now is to set the policy into a strong narrative of enhancing and embedding liberty through the spreading of wealth/ownership and power. Central to that policy will be a return to the Liberal Party's commitment of using government action  to achieve it. Politely asking the average shyster capitalist for a slice of his profits and control is not going to work!" Birkdale Focus wants the Liberal Democrats to rediscover their predecessors' enthusiasm for employee ownership.

Brown Moses Blog looks at the murder of Daniel Morgan, a private detective who was murdered just as he was reportedly close to revealing police corruption with links to the News of the World.

Edward Lucas reviews Anne Applebaum's "Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-56" for Standpoint.

"Perhaps the most rapturous applause of the day was saved for Chris Packham, who appeared holding a dead starling’s wing, a fox’s skull and clutching his boyhood nature diaries. Seeing him rail against fluorescent tabards, marigold gloves and disinfectant hand gel was a sight to behold." Jules Howard reports back from the Natural Childhood summit for Countryfile Magazine.

dymchurchworldnews on the things you find on the beach.

Lords reform: Jeremy Hunt may have cost the Conservatives the next election

Because they tend to do well in parts of the country where population is growing and badly in areas where it is shrinking, the redrawing of constituency boundaries helps the Conservatives. Because that redrawing does not happen very often, Conservatives find themselves fighting on a political battlefield that slopes against them.

They feel strongly about this. I have heard Sir John Major complain that the boundaries robbed him of a decisive victory in 1992, with the result that his majority had evaporated by the end of his time in office.

To an extent this is the Conservatives' own fault - Labour ran rings around them at the hearings last time there was a major redrawing of boundaries. And the argument that all local quirks and traditional loyalties must be sacrificed to abstract notions of fairness is an odd one in the mouth of a Conservative, but that is how they feel.

So the Conservatives wrote a radical redrawing of constituency boundaries, with little room for variation in size, written into the Coalition agreement.

This would have given them a much better chance of winning an overall majority at the next election.But it looks as though they will not get it after all.

Because an article in tomorrow's Guardian says:

Nick Clegg is expected to announce next week he has been forced to abandon Lords reform in the face of implacable Conservative backbench opposition that David Cameron has been unable to overcome. 

It is a bitter second blow to Clegg, who has already been forced to swallow abandoning electoral reform for the Commons, leaving the government's democratic reform agenda looking relatively threadbare

The same report points us to an article on the paper's website in which Chris Rennard says:

If the Lords is not to be given more legitimacy, then the case for reducing the number of MPs (and increasing the proportion of the payroll vote in the Commons) will also be weakened.

Quite. And if the Conservatives are going to pick and choose which parts of the Coalition agreement they are to support they can hardly complain if we Liberal Democrats now begin doing the same.

The Conservatives' willingness to throw away the redrawing of constituency boundaries, and thus greatly diminish their chances of a majority at the next election, is odd to say the least.

It strengthens my belief that their backbenches are simply ungovernable. As I have argued before, One of the Coalition parties is not up to government - and it's not the Lib Dems and David Cameron is the new John Major.

Some Conservatives have principled objections to reform of the Lords - or at least the reforms currently proposed. (They are, after all, Conservatives.) Others have no wish to lose the probability of an agreeable retirement job if things go wrong at the next election.

But the argument I heard most often was that the Tory backbenches were furious that the Liberal Democrats had not supported Jeremy Hunt in the Commons vote of no confidence over his conduct during News Corporation's takeover of BSkyB.

It is not so long since a man who let a young subordinate take the rap for his own misconduct would have aroused the ire of the knights of the shires. Now the Tory backbenches hero is a silly man with a silly haircut. And they are prepared to sacrifice their chances at the next election to support him.

We need a Leveson Inquiry for banking

Lord Leveson has not produced his recommendations yet, and when he does many of us of a Liberal persuasion may not like them. But we can already say that his inquiry has been a great success.

That is because it has laid bare the working of politicians and the media. We have heard editors, owners and politicians describing that they do under forensic questioning and on oath.

It seems it was the US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis who first said "sunlight is the best disinfectant". He was right, but the Leveson Inquiry has done more than expose wrongdoing. It has been an education to those who have taken an interest in it, laying bare the culture of journalism and its relationship with the political world.

And that is why we need a Leveson Inquiry for banking too.

Many of Leveson's most reported witnesses are facing criminal charges, which has meant that he has had to stay well clear of some topics.

That might turn out to be the case with any inquiry into banking too, but what it could do is allow sunlight to shine on the industry's practices.

The law may be adequate in banking: certainly, with phone-hacking it appears that a large part of the problem has been the authorities' strange unwillingness to enforce the existing law.

But whether or not the law on banking needs changing, it is certain that the culture of banking needs changing. And sunlight and a Leveson-style inquiry are the first steps in tackling that.

Of course the bankers will oppose it. Their apologists will tell us that all British bankers are always on the point of departing for highly paid jobs on Wall Street and must not be upset for that reason.

But that is nonsense, isn't it?

News Corp lobbyist "threatened" Lib Dems over Sky deal

Digital Spy has a report on the evidence Norman Lamb gave to the Leveson Inquiry today. At the time of his encounter with Fred Michel, Lamb was Nick Clegg's parliamentary private secretary:

Describing Michel's approach as "brazen", Lamb said the lobbyist had wanted "things to run smoothly" with the Sky bid, but warned that "if it goes the wrong way" he was "worried about the implications". 

The note added: "It was brazen. VC [Vince Cable] refers bid to Ofcom, they turn nasty." 

Lamb claimed that the threat was offset with an enticement should Cable allow the Sky bid to proceed unhindered. 

He said that it was proposed that The Sun would help persuade voters to back the Lib Dem's alternative voting (AV) system of proportional representation, which had been key to the party's coalition deal with the Conservatives. 

Lamb told Lord Justice Leveson that got a "very clear understanding" from the meeting with Michel that News Corp's UK newspapers had been supportive of Lib Dems in the past, but that positive coverage could change quickly. 

The note's final sentence says: "Implication was clear, News Int turn against coalition and AV [if bid does not go through]". 

In another note, Lamb said that Clegg had been "horrified" to hear what Michel allegedly said in the meeting. Clegg is said to have fretted: "We will lose the only papers who have been positive."