Prison officers ‘took newspaper payments’

Sue Akers, deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, told the inquiry into press standards that the stories possibly linked to payments to two officers at different high-security jails had produced “very limited material of genuine public interest”.

DAC Akers, who has led Operation Weeting – the phone-hacking element of the police inquiry – since the beginning of 2011, said one officer allegedly received nearly £35,000 from Trinity Mirror, News International and Express Newspapers in a 14-month period to June last year, with additional payments since.

The other allegedly received more than £14,000 from Trinity Mirror between February 2006 and January 2012.

Fifteen journalists arrested

She told Lord Justice Leveson: “It’s our assessment that there are reasonable grounds to suspect offences have been committed and that the majority of these stories reveal very limited material of genuine public interest.”

The Metropolitan Police has confirmed that prison officers, aged 31 and 35, were arrested at their respective homes on 14 June and 4 July this year. They have been bailed until October.

A Trinity Mirror spokesman said the company took the allegations very seriously and was co-operating with the police.

DAC Akers said that 15 current and former journalists had so far been arrested under Operation Weeting, which focuses on phone hacking.

Six people, including the former editor of the Sun, Rebekah Brooks, and her husband, Charlie, had been charged and are due in court in September.

More than 40 people had been arrested under Operation Elveden, the investigation into alleged corrupt payments to officials, DAC Akers said.

She said files relating to three police officers and one journalist were currently being considered by the Crown Prosecution Service.

A third police operation – Tuleta – which is examining computer hacking and infringement of privacy, had so far yielded seven arrests, she said.

- Operation Weeting: 15 journalists arrested; six charged
- Operation Elveden: 41 arrested (23 journalists, four police officers, nine public officials, five alleged go-betweens)
- Operation Tuleta: 7 arrests

The first of the closing speeches to the inquiry, which opened in July 2011, with the formal-evidence hearings starting four months later, was made by the Metropolitan Police counsel, Neil Garnham QC.

He acknowledged there had been incidents which led to a perception of “cosiness” between some senior police officers and certain journalists, but he said there was no “inappropriately close relationship” that actually tainted police decision-making.

Statutory regulation

Mr Garnham said the “overall picture” had shown the relationship between the press and senior police – “while not perfect” – to be “essentially sound”.

He acknowledged that the police decisions not to reopen the phone-hacking investigation in 2009 and 2010 had been taken too quickly, “with a defensive and closed mindset”.

But he said the decisions had not been influenced by officers’ relationships with News International.

Counsel for the Telegraph Media Group, Gavin Millar QC, told Lord Justice Leveson that newspapers were struggling to compete with the availability of news on the internet.

And while he acknowledged shortcomings with the current Press Complaints Commission, he said the company was opposed to the very principle of statutory regulation of the media, specifically because TMG had proved that it did not need it, and more generally because of the precedent it would set.

James Dingemans QC, who represented Northern & Shell, owner of the Express Newspapers group – which is not a member of the PCC – said that any future regulatory body should not include current editors in order to ensure independence.

And he said the group was adamant that internet news providers should come under any regulatory umbrella.