Phone Hacking: The waves lap around the Prime Minister’s ankles

Sir Paul Stephenson’s extraordinary resignation statement last night has brought the earthquake that is phone hacking to the doors of 10 Downing Street.

The Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police’s long and mostly self-justificatory statement contained, approximately half way through, a knifing in the back of the Prime Minister. Referring to his hiring of former News of the World journalist Neil Wallis, who was last week arrested in relation to phone hacking, Sir Paul made the following comments:

“Once Mr Wallis's name did become associated with Operation Weeting [into phone hacking], I did not want to compromise the Prime Minister in any way by revealing or discussing a potential suspect who clearly had a close relationship with Mr Coulson."

Sir Paul is in effect saying: “I couldn’t tell you about Wallis because you are close mates with Coulson who would have gone running back to News International to tell them all about our investigation.”

In his statement last night Sir Paul went on to say: "Unlike Mr Coulson, Mr Wallis had not resigned from the News of the World or, to the best of my knowledge been in any way associated with the original phone hacking investigation."

In other words: “I’ve got a good excuse for hiring an ex-News of the World staffer because he hadn’t been forced to resign from his previous job over phone hacking. What’s yours for hiring Coulson after he was forced to resign the editorship of the NOTW?”

There are two key issues now for the Prime Minister. Firstly, to use another Watergate analogy, is there a ‘Smoking Gun’ which points to the fact that he was asked to appoint Coulson by News International or worse forced to appoint him.

The other key issue is how the Tory press will react. Nearly two weeks ago Peter Oborne in the paper turned on the Prime Minster questioning his judgement over appointing Coulson. One veteran reader of the Daily Telegraph said to me it was “the most scathing indictment of a Conservative Prime Minister in the Telegraph since the paper turned on Anthony Eden over the Suez Crisis”.

Many Tory supporters are worried. Last night Tory blogger Iain Dale questioned whether the Prime Minister, indeed the Government, could survive this.

If the Prime Minister is not careful the waves currently lapping around his ankles will be up to his neck.

We live in extraordinary times.

New York Times puts Met PR in the dock

That it has taken the ‘Paper of Record’ to bring to light not only more evidence of continued News of the World phone-hacking, but also the lackadaisical approach of the Metropolitan Police towards investigating illegal phone-tapping operations, is only one extraordinary part of this unfolding story.

The entire New York Times article can be read HERE (it’s eight pages long so one for lunchtime probably!) but for those who have better things to do the facts are these. Firstly, unnamed sources within News International are now saying that Andy Coulson, then editor of NOTW and now David Cameron’s director or communications, knew full well what was going on and actively encouraged it.

There’s no surprise there, but what is extraordinary is the role of the Metropolitan police. Apparently, the Met’ has chosen not to investigate evidence of industrial-scale phone hacking of celebrities, MPs, members of the security services, football administrators because they were too busy, choosing to limit its investigations to hacking of Prince Harry’s phone.

What’s more, the Met’ has chosen not to inform those hacked by the NOTW that they had been targeted, which means that the targets can’t launch civil lawsuits against News International which could cost the organisation hundreds of millions. Gordon Taylor, Chief Executive of the Professional Footballers Association, has already taken them for £700,000 for one hack.

The article infers that the cosy relationship between the Met’ and the NOTW, encouraged and defended by police communications people (subsequently denied), has got in the way of the legal system. In other words, neither party wanted to disturb the flow of tip-offs about arrests in return for positve police-friendly headlines.

There are a number of concerns here, not least that hacking, according to the article, continues at the NOTW to this day and also the role of Coulson as special adviser to the Prime Minister.

However, I believe there is also a wider issue, namely the precise role of civilian PR representatives within the police service and, critically, how proactive they should be in publicising the work of the police.

I have no problem with the publicising of CSR related ‘good works’or arrest rates. However, working in PR, I know that the natural inclination of the PR person is to justify our existence with news headlines and 'good coverage'. I worry that this tendency has potentially led to television cameras and the press pack outside football manager Harry Redknapp’s house at four o’clock in the morning when the police knocked on his door. What were they doing there? How did they know?

If, and it remains an if, civilian PR people are responsible for these tip-offs then many would argue that they exceeding the boundaries of their job and encouraging the sort of cosy relationships which could potentially hinder the proper investigation of criminal activity.

The Met' is under pressure now and may well have to re-open its investigation, but the New York Times has also highlighted a wider issue which deserves debate in the PR community and beyond.