Phone hacking scandal deepens

[Jan Klimkowski]

Scotland Yard top brass frequently drank champagne and dined in exclusive London restaurants with Murdoch editors and reporters.

They claim this was all perfectly innocent.

Yates of the Yard, now Yates of Bahrain, claimed the dinners "were private and they were more likely to have discussed football than police matters".

In response to a News Intl email suggesting that a woman reporter who had "plied" Yates with champagne, should "call in" those favours, Yates responded with mock outrage: "I think it's slightly unfair that it's put to me in that way."

As for Andy "Dodgy" Hayman, his forensic police memory was on display:

Andy Hayman, the former Met assistant commissioner who had overall responsibility for the original 2006 News of the World phone-hacking investigation, had also drunk champagne with a journalist from the paper.

At a meeting in the Oriel restaurant Hayman spent £47 on a bottle for someone he recalls was from the paper and was possibly a female, although he could not recall their name.

Meanwhile, Scotland Yard's finest still maintain they didn't know Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott's phone had been hacked by the Murdoch empire, despite having the evidence as early as 2006:

He (Yates) insisted his controversial statement in 2009 that there was no fresh evidence to warrant a new investigation was based on the Met's knowledge at the time.

He told the inquiry he had asked for evidence that Prescott's phone had been hacked "scores" of times but was not given documentary proof until late 2010.

Prescott, who tweeted throughout Yates's Leveson appearance, said he "only discovered I was targeted by NOTW after contacting Met's Legal Services Directorate - more than 5 months after repeatedly asking Yates".

Yates told Leveson it was "deeply regrettable" that he did not know about Prescott or that the deputy prime minister had not been informed that his phone security had been compromised.

"I cannot tell you the amount of times I checked and sought further and better particulars about the possibility that Mr Prescott's phone had been interfered with," he said.

Full piece here.