15 Jul 2011

US phone hacking investigation ‘progressing’

The US Attorney-General says that investigations into News Corp’s American operations are progressing as the House of Lords prepars to debate media conduct.

Speaking in Sydney, Eric H Holder said: “There have been members of Congress in the United States who have asked us to investigate those same allegations and we are progressing in that regard using the appropriate federal law enforcement agencies”.

The FBI has already announced it is looking at allegations that Rupert Murdoch‘s News Corp tried to hack into the phone records of 9/11 victims, after growing Senate and Congress calls for an official inquiry.

Peter King, a Republican US congressman and chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, called for the investigation following a report in the Daily Mirror that alleged News of the World journalists offered to pay a New York police officer for the private phone records of victims of the 11 September, 2001 attacks.

Meanwhile, Britain’s top police officer, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson, is under pressure to explain how Scotland Yard came to employ a former News of the World journalist arrested in the phone hacking inquiry as a PR consultant.

Neil Wallis, who became the ninth person arrested since the Metropolitan Police launched the current investigation into phone hacking, was employed as recently as last year as sick leave cover for the force’s deputy director of public affairs, a police spokesman confirmed.

Home Secretary Theresa May wrote to Sir Paul last night to get “the full picture” of what happened, while the commissioner was summoned for a “very frank discussion” with London Mayor Boris Johnson lasting nearly an hour and a half.

“Sir Paul Stephenson reassured the mayor that the investigation at Scotland Yard is proceeding as swiftly and thoroughly as possible,” a spokesman for Mr Johnson said.

“He explained the circumstances of the hiring on a part-time, short-term basis of Neil Wallis.”

It has also emerged that Mr Wallis had been paid £24,000 by the Met to work as a two-day-a-month PR and that his contract was cancelled less than six months before the launch of the Operation Weeting investigation into phone hacking.

A debate on the allegations about the conduct of news media and the police and the position of News Corporation within UK media provision will be held later in the House of Lords.

Lord Prescott is expected to be a vocal participant in the debate, telling his followers on Twitter: “By the way I’ll be making a speech about Rupert Murdoch in the Lords.”