Phone hacking: Met Police failed to warn victims, says review

The Metropolitan Police failed to warn people that they had been the victims of possible phone hacking by the News of the World, a judicial review has said.

Ex-deputy prime minister Lord Prescott, Labour MP Chris Bryant and ex-Scotland Yard deputy assistant commissioner Brian Paddick had all pushed for the review, along with Ben Jackson, the former assistant to actor Jude Law, and an applicant known only as 'HJK'.

The individuals, some of whom had already received damages from the News of the World's publisher News International, accused the police of breaching their human rights by not notifying them of the potential crime.

Following the ruling, the Met Commissioner said that the police will extend "personal apologies" to all the claimants, but will not pay out any damages.

The case refers to the original 2006 police investigation into phone hacking, which resulted in the jailing of private investigator Glenn Mulcaire and News of the World royal reporter Clive Goodman the following year.

The police were criticised for not notifying victims at that stage, as many of them did not find out about the hacking until much later, and not without some effort.

Speaking to reporters outside the High Court, Lord Prescott said: "It's taken me 19 months to finally get justice. Time and again I was told by the Metropolitan Police that I had not been targeted by Rupert Murdoch's News of the World. But I refused to accept this was the case.

"Thanks to this judicial review, the Metropolitan Police has finally apologised for its failure to properly investigate, and inform victims, of the criminal acts of phone hacking committed by the News of the World."

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The Met Police are now re-examining the entire case from 2006, but said that officers considered at the time that the jailing of Goodman and Mulcaire was a "successful outcome of their investigation".

"The MPS is pleased to have reached an agreement in this case and accepts more should have been done by police in relation to those identified as victims and potential victims of phone hacking several years ago," said a statement.

"It is a matter of public record that the unprecedented increase in anti-terrorist investigations resulted in the parameters of the original inquiry being tightly drawn, and officers considered the prosecution and conviction of Clive Goodman and Glen Mulcaire as a successful outcome of their investigation."

The statement added that there are now more than 130 officers involved in the current Operation Weeting probe into phone hacking, while further staff are working on the Operate Tuleta and Operation Elveden probes into computer hacking and police bribery.

"Today's settlement does not entail damages being paid by the MPS and as the court has made clear, sets no precedent for the future. How the MPS treats victims goes to the very heart of what we do," said the police.

"It was important that this case did not result in such a wide duty being placed on police officers that it could direct them away from their core purpose of preventing and detecting crime. All the claimants are receiving personal apologies from the MPS."

The ruling comes just a day after police confirmed that they believe 829 people were "likely" to have been victims of hacking by newspapers.

Appearing at the Leveson Inquiry into press standards, deputy assistant commissioner Sue Akers said that 581 of those people had been contacted, while 231 could not be identified and 17 had not been told due to "operational reasons".

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