After quite a search last year, Baroness Betty Buxom turned out to be the only individual desperate enough to take on the chairmanship of the tainted Press Complaints Commission, from erratic wind & waffle wallah, Sir Christopher Meyer. She has done little since to dispel the sense of toothless futility which prevailed under her predecessor.
In one of her first big public pronouncements, to the Society of Editors Annual Conference last November, she told them that in the light of new evidence recently presented to the Commons Culture Media & Sport Committee, the PCC had re-examined the facts relating to the News of the World phone-hacking scandal. They had concluded, she said, that none of this evidence altered their previous conclusion – that Clive Goodman (Royal editor, jailed for his admitted phone-hacking) was a one-off, a rogue reporter and that only he, of all the other hacks on the Screws, had used this illegal method to invade privacy and acquire stories.
Nick Davies of the Guardian (who unearthed fresh evidence last year) had presented irrefutable evidence that the Screws’ senior Shag’n’Brag reporter, Neville “Onan the Barbarian” Thurlbeck had been using Mulcaire’s phone hacking services.
On 2 September 2009 Mark Lewis, the solicitor acting for Gordon Taylor whose extraction of some £700,000 in damages from the paper had sparked the story, was questioned by the committee. He told them that whilst conducting Mr Taylor’s claim he had attended court in order to make an application for the disclosure of documents from the police. Outside court he had spoken to DS Mark Maberly.
Lewis told the committee, “DS Mark Maberly said to me: “You are not having everything but we will give you enough on Taylor to hang them.” Those were his words: “to hang them”. . . He also mentioned the number of people whose phones had been hacked. Whether that was an aside . . . but they said that there was evidence about, or they had found there were something like 6,000 people who were involved. It was not clear to me whether that was 6,000 phones which had been hacked or 6,000 people including the people who had left messages.”
This evidence and the blatantly mendacious delivery of Screws management when trying to explain away these inconvenient facts, left no one in doubt that phone-hacking had been systemic within the paper across a wide range of reporters, and that it was very unlikely that any members of the management would not have known of the practice.
In her statement to the editors, however, Baroness Buxom claimed new further contrary evidence had come to light.
“Those of you who are familiar with the case will recall the significance that was attached to the apparent evidence of a then Detective Sergeant from the Metropolitan Police called Mark Maberly. It was he who was alleged to have said that around 6,000 people had had their phone messages hacked or intercepted.
The allegation was made in oral evidence to the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport, and has also been published in the press. It was repeated just last Monday in some coverage questioning our report.
Since the publication of our report last Monday, the PCC has heard from Detective Inspector (as he now is) Maberly through lawyers for the Metropolitan Police.
This letter says that Mr Maberly has in fact been wrongly quoted on the 6,000 figure. The reliable evidence, we were told in an e-mail confirming the contents of the letter, is that given by Assistant Commissioner John Yates to the Select Committee, who referred to only a “handful” of people being potential victims.
In light of this, I am doing two things.
First, I am of course putting this new evidence to my colleagues in the Press Complaints Commission, because they will want to update our report to take account of this development.
Second, I have just spoken to the Chairman of the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport, John Whittingdale, to draw this to his attention. Any suggestion that a Parliamentary Inquiry has been misled is of course an extremely serious matter.”

When Guardian reporter Chris Tryhorn asked whether the letter from the police “had effectively withdrawn Maberly’s evidence”, she replied:
“Maberly has been wrongly quoted in saying that 6,000 people were involved. He didn’t say it. He is said to have said it.”

This claim by the baroness was widely reported and, not surprisingly, Mark Lewis was incensed. He’d nothing to gain by appearing before the Culture Media & Sport Committee, other than the satisfaction of doing a public service, and now he had been widely branded a liar. He has now issued a claim against the Baroness, the PCC and the MPS for damages inrespect of a clear libel. 
The PCC, in response to a critical reference in the Committee’s report last February, decided to backtrack from this clearly articulated position by issuing a statement in April in which they attempt to eat the Baroness’s words…..
“Baroness Buscombe has never suggested – and does not believe – that Mr Lewis misled the Select Committee and her statement, which made no reference to Mr Lewis, was not intended as a criticism of him or the evidence which he gave to the Select Committee. Baroness Buscombe regrets that her statement may have been misunderstood and that this has been of concern to Mr Lewis. Baroness Buscombe and the Commission therefore wish to make the position entirely clear.”
Oh dear. That’s very clear – she said it, but then she didn’t say it.
I think Mark Lewis may succeed in his suit.

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Today the PCC has published its biggest report so far since the new chairperson, the almost invisible Baroness Buscombe took over from bombastic banana skin skier Christopher Meyer.
As anyone who has watched this lily-livered organisation in action would expect, it manages no more than a pale watery light grey wash over the misdeeds of News International’s old harridan of a rag, the News of the World.
They are happy to publish the feeble denials issued by little Colin Myler, gibbering fall guy in the Screws post-Coulson era, over their hacking of the Princes’ voicemails.
Nick Davies at Mediaguardian isn’t quite right when he says today that it hadn’t been revealed before that the paper had hacked into the royal phones until Assistant Commissioner at the Met, John Yates, pressed by Adam Price, admitted it to the Culture, Media, Sport Committee on September 2nd.
In my book, News of the world? Fake Sheikhs & Royal Trappings, in May 2008, I refer to a story – “Fury after he ogled lapdancer’s boobs” – in which the paper produces a verbatim transcript of a jokey message left by Prince William on Prince Harry’s voicemail. I posited that, unless the paper had just made it up, the only way it could have been obtained the story was through illegal phone-tapping, and, while they are past-masters at creative embellishment, it was inconceivable that they would have risked making up a personal royal story like this.
Subsequent revelations about the timing of police investigations into the activities of News of the World royal editor, Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator contracted by the paper to gather information (although in this case, paid directly in cash by Goodman) have established that the Royal Household were aware of this reporter’s activities by the time the story was published, and therefore the message was likely to have been a kite deliberately flown to confirm their findings. From this, it was clear to anyone investigating events that the paper had indeed hacked the princes’ voicemails.
The PCC’s report on the subject doesn’t address the fact that the by-line on the “Lapdancer’s boobs” story was shared by Clive Goodman and Neville Thurlbeck, a senior reporter who has been involved in many different methods of gathering personal stories. Although in last year’s High Court hearing over Max Mosley’s claim against the paper, Thurlbeck denied that he had any idea where the Royal story had come from, it was beyond the credibility of most observers that he would have been unaware of the illegal manner in which the key element of the story had been acquired. Along with an email obtained and revealed by Nick Davies last July which directly implicated Thurlbeck, this more than suggests that Clive Goodman was by no means the only journalist on the News of the World involved in phone-hacking.
The PCC seem to have accepted the evidence given them by Colin Myler, the current editor, that the story which contained the transcript of a voicemail message was in fact a conversation. Although self-evidently not based on a ‘conversation’, had it been, the paper would have been guilty of an even more serious breach of privacy, by hacking into a live conversation. Presumably aware of this, Myler made the extraordinary claim that their source was not phone-hacking, but a dancer called Annabella at Spearmint Rhino. How she would have had access to a transcript of a phone conversation between the two princes is not explained. This is an entirely new version of the grounds on which the story was based. Certainly Neville Thurlbeck hadn’t thought of using it when questioned in the High Court last year.
Absurdly, though, the PCC has used this highly questionable evidence of Myler’s to discredit the Guardian’s report.

The PCC also omitted in their summary of evidence given to the CMS committee by Gordon Taylor’s lawyer, Mark Lewis, to pursue further his statement [quoted from CMS Com website]:
Detective Sergeant Mark Maberly said to me, “You are not having everything but we will give you enough on Taylor to hang them.” …… He also mentioned the number of people whose phones had been hacked….. they had found there were something like 6,000 people who were involved. It was not clear to me whether that was 6,000 phones which had been hacked, or 6,000 people including the people who had left messages.
The PCC didn’t contact or question DS Maberly. That the PCC in their attempt to discredit the Guardian’s report have chosen to ignore such clear evidence demonstrates once again their unfitness – or simple unwillingness – to carry out the function of press self-regulation for which they were set up.
They also showed an alarming lack of determination in failing to question Andy Coulson who was editor while all the royal phone hacking was going on – either now, or (because he had “left the industry”) after the conviction of Goodman. Given his extraordinary denial to the CMS committee last July that he knew anything about the story which had been flagged on the front page and filled page 7 of an edition that he had edited, it seems imprudent, to say the least, to have overlooked any part he might have played.

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