Last Thursday, intrepid West Bromwich MP Tom Watson, who joined the Commons Culture Media & Sport Committee last summer after a stint in the Cabinet Office, asked the Solicitor General, Vera Baird if she would look into the question of whether or not the Crown Prosecution Service had successfully brought cases based on information gathered by illegal phone hacking at the News of the World.
    Presumably specific instances have been identified and Tom feels that this might explain the very obvious reluctance of the Metropolitan Police – specifically Asst Commissioner John Yates – to reveal all that they know about the extent and detail of the paper’s one time routine hacking of private voicemails to find the celebrity trivia stories on which they rely so heavily.
    It’s long been clear from prosecutions obviously instigated by the utterly discredited Screws former “Investigations Editor” (now Expensive Embarrassment) Mazher Mahmood, that there exists between the paper and the police more than the normal cosy relationships between a few detectives and a few crime reporters.
    With Mahmood, high profile cases were pursued by London police and prosecuted by the CPS – The “Red Mercury Dirty Bomb” scare, the Beckham’s “Kidnap” and the Kieren Fallon “Fixer” story (all of which collapsed through a complete lack of evidence) – which show that they are prepared to co-operate with the paper on the flimsiest, most fanciful of grounds. In return for what?
    Surely not simply the ongoing News International Sponsorship of the Police Bravery Awards ceremony?
    Of course, the police are aware, as is reported from New York by Murdoch biographer, Michael Wolff, that Rupert ‘Rumplechops’ is seriously concerned that the truth about the Screws lawless behaviour under the 20 year regime of (now sacked) Managing Editor, Stuart Kuttner and head lawyer, Tom Crone, will emerge, leaving Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal CEO, Les Hinton quite possibly implicated in the journalistic crime wave that was in operation while he was i/c News International.
    Certainly Hinton’s bumbling, obfuscating evidence given to the CMS Committee by video-link last autumn (and part of the “collective amnesia” described by committee chairman, John Whittingdale) was strongly indicative of his involvement and a guilty conscience.
    Could this be another reason why Young James Murdoch can’t wait to see the back of the embarrassing, venal old cow the Screws has become?

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