:00:02. > :00:09.Click on the link and you will find it there. I will be back at the top
:00:09. > :00:17.of the hour with a full but et inn. Now we will have a -- bulletin. Now
:00:17. > :00:20.we will have a look at the Leveson Inquiry.
:00:21. > :00:30.You will be bribing more police officers. Won't you? That is not
:00:31. > :00:32.
:00:32. > :00:37.accurate, is it? It is not entirely When the worst happens we rely on
:00:37. > :00:41.the police to investigate and crime reporters to tell us about their
:00:41. > :00:45.investigation. This week, this inquiry asked whether both sides,
:00:45. > :00:50.police and journalists, were sticking to the rules, whether they
:00:50. > :00:55.had grown too close and what happens when things go wrong? On
:00:55. > :01:01.day 48, a senior officer in the Metropolitan Police, who thought a
:01:01. > :01:06.few of her colleagues had far too much to say to the press.
:01:06. > :01:11.Whether negligent or careless, when it is official secrets, through to
:01:11. > :01:14.actually forming a relationship with somebody and deliberately
:01:14. > :01:20.passing information to somebody, for example a member of the press,
:01:20. > :01:23.we have had a small number of convictions and some misconduct
:01:23. > :01:27.findings. Some officers, if not guilty of misconduct, left the
:01:27. > :01:32.public thinking there was not enough distance between them and
:01:32. > :01:35.reporters. I think it is certainly a perception. There east no doubt
:01:35. > :01:39.about that. It is clearly -- there's no doubt about that. It
:01:39. > :01:45.whats been clearly discussed here and within the media. It is also
:01:45. > :01:53.the case that there's been very regular and close contact between
:01:53. > :02:00.some senior members of the Met. contact with the media was more
:02:00. > :02:04.closely regulated. The inquiry barrister quoted from her evidence.
:02:04. > :02:08.I request any information to the director of public affairs. Any
:02:08. > :02:16.request for an interview I have accepted has been supported by DP
:02:16. > :02:24.and I have always a press officer present at a inter-- an interview.
:02:24. > :02:34.Cressida Dick could speak directly to Kit Malthouse.
:02:34. > :02:35.
:02:35. > :02:43.On a couple of occasions, he has, I thought jokingly said to me, "I
:02:43. > :02:50.hope you are not putting too many resores in." On the third occasion,
:02:50. > :02:55.-- resources in." On the third occasion, I said, "Well, that's my
:02:55. > :03:01.decision, not yours. That is why I am operationally independent." We
:03:01. > :03:06.went on to have a perfectly reasonable conversation about where
:03:06. > :03:11.the public interest lay, which of course is a legitimate thing for
:03:11. > :03:20.him to want to discuss with me. I felt I wanted to put down a marker.
:03:20. > :03:25.Mainly because I didn't want to compromise him. Kit Malthouse's
:03:25. > :03:31.spokesman said it had been entirely proper for him to have that
:03:31. > :03:35.conversation with Cressida Dick, and questioned the Met in any
:03:35. > :03:40.number of areas. With the mayoral race well underway, this has become
:03:40. > :03:43.a party political issue. One Labour MP has called for the deputy mayor
:03:43. > :03:48.to resign over similar evidence earlier in the inquiry. The issue
:03:48. > :03:53.here is politicians with the job of scrutinising the police, but the
:03:53. > :03:56.obligation not to compromise their operational independence. The
:03:56. > :04:06.question is whether police and politicians should draw the line.
:04:06. > :04:08.
:04:08. > :04:16.On day 49, the Met spoke to the press about what was being done.
:04:16. > :04:20.So, you didn't need to do the entertaining bit to do the job? I'm
:04:20. > :04:30.not suggesting it was necessarily wrong. It's not a necessary part of
:04:30. > :04:34.
:04:34. > :04:40.the job? Not always, no. Ever? think meeting journalists on an
:04:40. > :04:43.informal basis is not inappropriate. No. I didn't say it was. I am
:04:43. > :04:47.simply asking whether it's a necessary part of the job?
:04:47. > :04:51.could argue, no. Yes, you could argue no, or you
:04:51. > :04:56.could argue, yes. But you are doing the job. You have done it for many
:04:56. > :05:05.years. Do you think it is a necessary part of the job? I don't
:05:05. > :05:10.think you can come down one way or the other. Well,, do I gather Miss
:05:10. > :05:14.Cheesley that you do not want to answer that question? Not at all,
:05:14. > :05:21.Sir. That morning Rebekah Brooks and her husband, Charlie were among
:05:21. > :05:26.six people arrested by police on suspicion of trying to convert the
:05:26. > :05:33.-- pervert the course of justice. The second time she was arrested
:05:33. > :05:37.during the investigation. The head of press at the Met answered
:05:37. > :05:42.questions to Rebekah Brooks about a police horse. He said he had to
:05:42. > :05:47.tell the Met commissioner all about it buzz he had lunch with Rebekah
:05:47. > :05:57.Brooks on the same day. Brooks visited the stables.
:05:57. > :05:59.
:05:59. > :06:06.You say in paragraph 63 that you felt that this, which presumably
:06:06. > :06:10.was Rebekah Brooks taking out the horse, could be for the care of
:06:10. > :06:17.retired police horses. You were keen she got her horse. Is that
:06:17. > :06:19.right? I was expressing a view that if she got a horse it might leak to
:06:19. > :06:25.some coverage. Why did you speak to the commissioner about it, if it
:06:25. > :06:30.with us not on the premise that she would get her horse? I spoke to the
:06:30. > :06:39.commissioner because on the day I was due to take her there, we were
:06:39. > :06:45.having lunch with Rebekah Wade. I thought it would be wrong for her
:06:45. > :06:48.having been at the stables that morning have a conversation with an
:06:48. > :06:52.officer. I thought her first line would be "We had an interesting
:06:52. > :06:57.morning at the stables." The commissioner might be blank. I
:06:58. > :07:02.thought he needed to be briefed. News with News International staff
:07:02. > :07:12.continued. That was just a couple of weeks,
:07:12. > :07:14.
:07:14. > :07:22.was it, after the arrest mf Mr Mulcaire and Mr Goodman? Yes.
:07:22. > :07:25.Was that wise? I think looking at it now, one would question that and
:07:25. > :07:29.one would question a series of interactions over the following
:07:29. > :07:39.months and years. Phone hacking was not discussed at those meetings, he
:07:39. > :07:43.said. There were questions too about the decision to let Lucy
:07:44. > :07:48.Panton to e-mail a story to her news desk. Did you have any concern
:07:48. > :07:55.about the ethics of that, putting to one side she was using your
:07:55. > :07:59.machine to pass on this story? the time, I was thinking I was
:07:59. > :08:06.helping someone who was put under, what I thought was unnecessary
:08:06. > :08:12.pressure, if not bullying by a news desk. To help her solve the problem.
:08:12. > :08:16.In return, from my perspective, I thought I would get sight of a
:08:16. > :08:20.story, which I might not otherwise get sight of until Sunday morning.
:08:20. > :08:27.It was for me to consider the impact of that on the Metropolitan
:08:27. > :08:36.Police, if at all. Do you feel that this is an example of an error of
:08:36. > :08:40.judgment, perhaps, which was resulting from your friendship can
:08:40. > :08:44.Lucy Panton? I don't think from my friendship. I would consider doing
:08:44. > :08:48.it for anybody in that set of circumstances. I accept it may have
:08:48. > :08:54.been an error of judgment. biggest question about his judgment
:08:54. > :08:59.was on his decision to employ this man, Neil Wallis. A former deputy
:08:59. > :09:03.editor of the News of the World to advice the Met on PR once he left
:09:03. > :09:07.the paper. He was later arrested and bailed. The decision has been
:09:07. > :09:11.examined by the Independent Police Complaints commission, with
:09:11. > :09:21.Fedorcio on leave from the Met since last year. It was John Yates
:09:21. > :09:26.who decided not to re-open the phone hacking allegations. Not
:09:26. > :09:33.knowing how friendly they were and how friendly they were outside of
:09:33. > :09:36.work. Had you known what you know now about the proximity of the
:09:36. > :09:44.relationship between Mr Yates and Mr Wallis, would you have thought
:09:44. > :09:49.it inappropriate to hire Mr Wallis at all? You were aware there was an
:09:49. > :09:59.issue surrounding Mr Wallis and the News of the Worldch he was the
:09:59. > :10:00.
:10:00. > :10:07.deputy editor of the News of the World. You were aware of that,
:10:07. > :10:13.weren't you? Yes. Did that not of itself cause warning bells to ring?
:10:13. > :10:18.I think I need to be sure, whether in the work that was done
:10:18. > :10:22.originally, or in this scoping work, would have been done, at the time
:10:22. > :10:29.was there anything where Mr Wallis's name or anything that is
:10:29. > :10:39.in that that might give a cause for concern to say they shouldn't touch
:10:39. > :10:43.it. I didn't get that indication. On day 50, the view from other side.
:10:43. > :10:48.The reporter whose job is it to look into the police.
:10:48. > :10:51.I perceive it as an over reaction. It is already happening. I have
:10:51. > :10:56.relationships with officers that the press off Fiz are trying to
:10:56. > :11:00.stop me talking to now, for no - no decisions have been made, but this
:11:00. > :11:04.is happening already. The officer, a senior rank, I have known for
:11:04. > :11:08.many years, I wanted him to talk to me about a subject that he knew
:11:08. > :11:12.very well. He had been senior investigating officer. Both cases
:11:12. > :11:17.had concluded. He was happy to talk to me, but he said I had to ask a
:11:17. > :11:22.press officer. I asked a press officer in an e-mail and on the
:11:22. > :11:26.phone, she refused me access to the officer. Lord Justice Leveson said
:11:26. > :11:30.all meetings between press and the police could be recorded. The
:11:30. > :11:35.journalists had a warning for the judge. I think closing down
:11:35. > :11:41.communications and only allowing information to come from one source,
:11:41. > :11:44.is not necessarily going to reduce abuse or corruption. It could drive
:11:44. > :11:49.it underground, drive the flow of information underground and create
:11:49. > :11:59.a black market, if you like. So, I think we need to use the laws we
:11:59. > :12:03.
:12:03. > :12:10.No one is suggesting you need to be confined to one source only, the
:12:10. > :12:16.official source? Information is constantly channelled through
:12:16. > :12:20.official sources. Police officers are scared of talking. This veteran
:12:20. > :12:25.correspondent recalled a time after being appointed to a crime reporter
:12:25. > :12:32.to the News of the World in 1981, when the news editor did nothing he
:12:32. > :12:37.was doing enough, and had a suggestion. He said, you have to up
:12:37. > :12:40.your performance. I said it is really, it really difficult. I am
:12:40. > :12:46.struggling to make the adjustments in this difficult world and so
:12:46. > :12:53.forth. He said to me, there is money available, you should be out
:12:53. > :12:58.there are spending it on your contacts. I cannot remember exactly
:12:58. > :13:08.how the dialogue float now, but I said I am sorry, what are you
:13:08. > :13:16.suggesting? He said put some inducements out there. I said, and
:13:16. > :13:22.right, OK. I recoiled from this but he was my boss. I went away and I
:13:22. > :13:26.thought, did I hear this correctly? About three or four weeks later,
:13:26. > :13:35.clearly my performance was still not satisfactory and he took me to
:13:35. > :13:41.one side and he was quite cross with me, I suppose. He said to me,
:13:41. > :13:45.have you taken up my suggestion, I do not see anything here, you are
:13:45. > :13:51.not invoicing reform money to be splashed about. He said you should
:13:52. > :13:58.be essentially bribing more police officers. A couple of weeks later
:13:58. > :14:08.he was taken off the crime beat. There was an element in there that
:14:08. > :14:09.
:14:09. > :14:15.had a tendency towards questionable, unethical behaviour. And that
:14:15. > :14:23.manifested itself in a variety of ways. I think there was some
:14:23. > :14:29.reporters who played very fast and loose with the truth. And I think
:14:29. > :14:33.there were probably reporters there who had, not just in the world of
:14:33. > :14:39.policing, probably had informants been paid in other areas of private
:14:39. > :14:45.life. But it was only anecdotal evidence. And others be on German -
:14:45. > :14:52.- journalism were not playing by the rules either. A pernicious
:14:52. > :14:58.influence on some journalists were a small number of former police
:14:58. > :15:02.officers, some of whom I would have to say had excellent sense of what
:15:02. > :15:12.was news and what wasn't, better than some journalists I think in
:15:12. > :15:15.
:15:15. > :15:20.some cases. They realised they were exploitable. As X's police officers
:15:20. > :15:24.-- as ex-police officers they could legitimately be paid for
:15:24. > :15:30.information and there was always a suspicion, nothing was ever proven,
:15:30. > :15:34.they were receiving information from certain police officers,
:15:34. > :15:39.brokering that information to certain journalists and
:15:39. > :15:44.organisations and sharing the profits. On day 51, the story of
:15:44. > :15:49.one of the most controversial murder investigations which when
:15:49. > :15:52.reopened led to the conviction of two men. The Daily Mail named on
:15:52. > :15:58.its front page the five men it said had murdered Stephen Laurence and
:15:58. > :16:02.invited them to sue them if it thought it got its facts wrong. But
:16:02. > :16:06.the officer in charge of the later inquiry, it was Daily Mail reporter,
:16:06. > :16:11.Stephen Wright, who published 10 years on, details of a secret
:16:11. > :16:17.meeting between the Met, Stephen Laurence's mother and investigators
:16:18. > :16:22.on the case. I have nothing respect for Mr Right and no one has tried
:16:22. > :16:29.harder, no organisation has tried to bring justice to Stephen's
:16:29. > :16:33.parents. But we were getting there. It was undermining that inquiry.
:16:33. > :16:37.After suspects arrested in the inquiry, the senior investigating
:16:37. > :16:41.officer said one potential witness asked him to keep his name and
:16:41. > :16:48.address secret from a senior member of the Met's staff, he claimed it
:16:48. > :16:52.was rumoured to have a corrupt relationship with the media.
:16:52. > :16:55.contact him bided information astute to keep his name and address
:16:55. > :17:00.a secret because they were frightened of what the defendants
:17:00. > :17:06.would do after they had been arrested. This was during the
:17:06. > :17:15.period before November 2011? It was January I was contacted and that
:17:15. > :17:21.was when he asked me to keep his name with the senior member of the
:17:21. > :17:27.Met. The contacts said it was well known in Fleet Street that this
:17:27. > :17:32.person, the senior person briefed outside official meetings and late
:17:32. > :17:39.is added a more serious allegation? Correct. Neither the contact or the
:17:39. > :17:42.police officer was named. But its findings were reported to the
:17:42. > :17:47.Independent Police Complaints Commission and an investigation
:17:47. > :17:52.into illegal payments by the media to public officials. We have heard
:17:52. > :18:00.about expensive lunches shared by journalist and police. The crime
:18:00. > :18:05.reporter of the Sun poured cold water on that report of high living.
:18:05. > :18:12.There have been reports of long lunches and reporters, journalists
:18:12. > :18:20.entertaining lavishly, bottles of champagne. My experience actually,
:18:20. > :18:27.is those lunches and dinners become an increasing rarity over the last
:18:28. > :18:32.few years. And that is perhaps Phoebe Street sobered up or perhaps
:18:32. > :18:39.the police became more professional with alcohol taken during working
:18:39. > :18:44.hours. He found himself at odds with the Met's lawyer over an
:18:44. > :18:51.accusation the Met kept track of which reporters most the Rick --
:18:51. > :18:55.wrote the most friendly pieces. I suggest the Met graded
:18:55. > :19:00.journalists according how favourable stories are towards the
:19:00. > :19:05.Met. Can you give us an indication as to how you think you know that?
:19:05. > :19:12.I cannot tell you who told me, but they may not be such a system now,
:19:12. > :19:16.but I can tell you I was reliably informs about three to four years
:19:16. > :19:22.ago, could be five years ago that there was such a system. Could it
:19:22. > :19:29.be possible EU and your source could be confusing and arrangements
:19:29. > :19:36.did detect policing themes in the media, although even that did not
:19:36. > :19:41.isolate journalists? I am quite confident of what I said is correct.
:19:41. > :19:43.Eight Daily Mail executive, formerly a long-serving crime
:19:44. > :19:50.Correspondent, described the pressures he and his colleagues
:19:51. > :19:57.were under. As crime reporters we act ethically, but we are soon out
:19:57. > :20:00.of work if we rely on press releases. At Stowe about the story
:20:00. > :20:03.had this undermined the Stephen Laurence investigation, he said he
:20:03. > :20:08.warned Scotland Yard about it in advance and had been told not to
:20:08. > :20:16.run it. He was asked if he were shocked by the concern expressed by
:20:16. > :20:22.the police officer? There was shock in the sense that I would disagree
:20:22. > :20:27.personally that that article would jeopardise the police investigation.
:20:28. > :20:32.Then, the former legal manager of the Times, Alastair Brett who had
:20:32. > :20:38.one of the paper's then reporters coming to him admitting to gaining
:20:38. > :20:47.unauthorised access to an anonymous e-mail account. On that allow the
:20:47. > :20:51.reporter, Patrick Foster, to unearth the identity. But the
:20:51. > :20:56.policeman's lawyers went to court to protect his identity. Only after
:20:56. > :21:01.getting into the e-mail did Foster go about really obtaining the
:21:01. > :21:05.policeman's name through publicly available information. The court in
:21:06. > :21:11.considering to protect the policeman's identity was not told
:21:12. > :21:16.about e-mail hacking. And there were sharp questions about whether
:21:16. > :21:21.Foster's statement in the case gave a full picture on discovering the
:21:21. > :21:26.policeman's name. I began to systematically and running the
:21:26. > :21:30.details of the articles through the database of newspaper articles
:21:30. > :21:37.collected around the country. I could not find any real life
:21:37. > :21:42.examples. That suggests that is where he started and that is how he
:21:42. > :21:49.has gone about it, doesn't it? suggests he has done precisely that,
:21:49. > :21:59.yes. And that is how he has gone about it? Yes. That is not accurate,
:21:59. > :22:18.
:22:18. > :22:25.is it? It is not entirely accurate, know. Paragraph 15. Sorry, I have
:22:25. > :22:29.started now. Because of the startling similarities between the
:22:29. > :22:38.posts and the case detail in the newspaper reports, I began to work
:22:38. > :22:48.under the assumption... I began to work under the assumptions. Same
:22:48. > :22:49.
:22:49. > :22:54.question, that simply isn't accurate is it? I know we are being
:22:54. > :22:59.fantastically precise. I am being precise because this is a statement
:22:59. > :23:05.been submitted to a court, we do not want me to be precise?
:23:05. > :23:09.course I would want you to be precise. It is not a full story.
:23:09. > :23:13.spokesman for the Times and News International says his testimony
:23:13. > :23:17.was a painful reminder in which the conduct of the paper failed to meet
:23:17. > :23:23.its own standards. Lord Justice leathers and won't get the full