Phone hacking scandal deepens

[Jan Klimkowski]

As the gun continues to smoke, top LibDems, Deputy PM Clegg and Ashdown, admit they were briefed about Coulson and warned Cameron, who ignored their warnings.

Phone hacking: I warned No 10 over Coulson appointment, says Ashdown

Lib Dem peer advised that decision would cause 'terrible damage' after being briefed about NoW former editor's past

Toby Helm and Daniel Boffey guardian.co.uk, Saturday 9 July 2011 19.22 BST

The crisis engulfing David Cameron over phone hacking deepened on Saturday as Paddy Ashdown revealed that he had warned No 10 only days after the general election of "terrible damage" to the coalition if he employed Andy Coulson in Downing Street.

The former Liberal Democrat leader, who had been extensively briefed on details that had not been made public for legal reasons, was so convinced that the truth would eventually emerge that he contacted the prime minister's office.

Ashdown, a key player as the Liberal Democrats agonised over whether to join in a coalition with the Tories, told the Observer that, based on what he had been told, it was obvious Coulson's appointment as Cameron's director of communications would be a disaster.

"I warned No 10 within days of the election that they would suffer terrible damage if they did not get rid of Coulson, when these things came out, as it was inevitable they would," he said.

Cameron, who will meet Milly Dowler's parents to discuss the government's response to phone hacking, refused to heed the advice and recruited the former News of the World editor to be his right-hand man in charge of the media at No 10.

It has also emerged that Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, received similar briefings to those given to Ashdown before the election, which he raised with Cameron only to be rebuffed by the prime minister, who insisted that it was right to give Coulson a "second chance".

Senior Whitehall sources say that Clegg was stunned by what he was told but concluded, after the coalition deal was struck, that he was powerless to change Cameron's mind. "Clegg said: 'It is not up to me to tell the prime minister who to appoint as his director of communications'," said a source.

Downing Street also faces fresh questions about why it failed to act on information passed by the Guardian to Cameron's director of strategy, Steve Hilton, about Coulson's professional relationship with the private detective Jonathan Rees.

Downing Street appeared to alter its story from claiming that the information passed to it was merely that which appeared in the newspaper to claiming that "much" of it was. The Guardian insists that Hilton was given information it had been unable to publish owing to legal proceedings, including the fact that Rees was awaiting trial for murder and that he had been jailed for seven years for conspiring to frame a woman by placing cocaine in her car.

Coulson, arrested by police on Friday over his role in the scandal, went on to be cleared by the security vetting team at Downing Street after three in-depth interviews about his professional and personal life. He was given "strap one" status, which allowed him the highest access to top-secret material.