The following one exchange in the conversation which Hugh Grant recorded with Paul McMullan for the New Statesman now looks very interesting:
Me Ah . . . I think that was one of the questions asked last week at one of the parliamentary committees. They asked Yates [John Yates, acting deputy commissioner of the Metropolitan Police] if it was true that he thought that the NoW had been hacking the phones of friends and family of those girls who were murdered . . . the Soham murder and the Milly girl [Milly Dowler].
Him Yeah. Yeah. It’s more than likely. Yeah . . . It was quite routine. Yeah – friends and family is something that’s not as easy to justify as the other things.
Was phone hacking in high-profile police investigations really “quite routine”?
It would seem so. According to Channel 4 News Tom Watson MP has now raised serious concerns:
[Watson] said there was “a lot more to come out”, including, he believed, allegations involving phone-hacking in the case of the Soham murders of schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman.
“Since I have been involved in this inquiry, there are a number of whistleblowers that I have spoken to and I believe there is a strong suspicion that one of the Soham parents was targeted by Glenn Mulcaire,” he added.
When it first became clear that the Royal Household phones had been hacked, there was no logical reason why the phones of other public figures had not also been hacked. And so it turned out.
Similarly, if the tabloids could hack phones in the investigation into the disappearance of Milly Dowler, there is no logical reason why they were not routinely hacking the phones of victims and their friends and families during other high-profile investigations.
Someone should now look at tabloid reportage of all recent murder investigations for stories which could only be from phone hacking. It was probably a commonplace.
Indeed, it would be very interesting to see if any coverage of past murder investigations quietly disappears off tabloid websites tonight.
David Allen Green is legal correspondent of the New Statesman
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