Scotland Yard has beefed up its team tackling phone hacking as its workload continues to grow.

Officers working on the inquiry have been been boosted from 45 to 60 after a "significant increase in the workload", Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers said.

She said the move came as officers experienced a "surge of inquiries and requests for assistance from the public and solicitors" as the scandal snowballed over the last fortnight.

High Court judge has ordered police to disclose information relating to alleged hacking of the voicemail messages of Hugh Grant and Jemima Khan.

Mr Justice Vos said the Metropolitan Police should disclose details of alleged hacking by a private investigator for the News of the World.

Mr Grant and Ms Khan were not in court and the Met did not oppose the order.

Hugh Grant was among figures who led calls for a public inquiry into phone hacking by the News of the World.

During the 20-minute hearing at the High Court in London on Wednesday lawyers representing Mr Grant and Ms Khan said police had indicated their telephone messages may have been intercepted.


There is certainly interest (in my private life) but it's back to the old cliche of what is interesting to the public, and what is in the public interest”

Hugh Grant
Can celebrities expect privacy?
Mr Grant's belief he was a victim of phone hacking led him to carry out an undercover investigation on the issue for the New Statesman magazine in April.

Ms Khan recently told The Independent she had become a member of the "hacked club".

She told the paper: "I do remember noticing that voicemail messages, which I had not yet listened to, were going directly to old or saved messages.

"I assumed, as any techno-moron would, that I had simply messed up the phone settings."

After it emerged earlier this month that among the phones hacked was that of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler, Mr Grant joined the Hacked Off campaign calling for a public inquiry.

The government later announced a judge-led inquiry to look at phone hacking and the wider issue of media regulation.

Hacking on 'industrial scale'
Mr Grant recently told the BBC how he secretly recorded a conversation with former News of the World journalist Paul McMullen after he "boasted" about phone hacking "on an industrial scale".

Asked if there was legitimate public interest in his private life, Mr Grant said: "There is certainly interest but it's back to the old cliche of what is interesting to the public and what is in the public interest.

"A lot of it is of interest to the public but none of it is in the public interest."

Mr Grant is one of thousands of people - from footballers, politicians and actors to "ordinary people" - whose phones are believed to have been hacked by private investigator Glenn Mulcaire.

Several high-profile figures, including former Deputy Prime Minister Lord Prescott, actor Jude Law, television presenter Ulrika Jonsson and retired footballer Paul Gascoigne, have launched damages claims against News Group Newspapers, publishers of News of the World.

A civil trial at the High Court is due in January.

Mr Justice Vos is due to hear evidence about several "lead claimants" at the trial and assess damages.

Several people, including actress Sienna Miller and football pundit Andy Gray, have already settled out of court.

 

Senior royal staff were "gobsmacked" over the appointment of the former News Of The World (NOTW) editor Andy Coulson by David Cameron, Sky sources have said.


Royal correspondent Paul Harrison said there were "grave concerns" within the household when Mr Coulson was taken on by Mr Cameron in 2007 when he was in opposition.
Mr Coulson was then made director of communications when Mr Cameron became Prime Minister in 2010.
The journalist resigned as editor of the NOTW in 2007 after royal reporter Clive Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire were jailed for hacking the phones of royal aides.
Mr Coulson has since been arrested and questioned by detectives on the new hacking inquiry launched earlier this year.
Harrison said it was not known if the concern went up to members of the royal family or not.
Downing Street has said the claim is a "scurrilous allegation" and "complete rubbish".

Buckingham Palace said: "On no occasion did anyone from Buckingham Palace raise concerns with Downing Street."
During a debate on the phone-hacking scandal in the Commons, the PM has admitted that "with hindsight" he would never have given a job to Mr Coulson and said he is "extremely sorry" about the furore it has caused.
On Tuesday Rupert and James Murdoch were quizzed by a committee of MPs about allegations of hacking at the NOTW.
Rupert Murdoch apologised and said it was the "most humble day" of his career.
Mr Cameron has been facing demands to apologise for appointing Mr Coulson, who resigned in January.
Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt told Sky News the PM had been entitled to rely on assurances given by Mr Coulson that he had no knowledge of the practice by journalists at the paper.

James and Rupert Murdoch spoke for over three hours
"What the Prime Minister didn't have was a crystal ball that enabled him to predict all the appalling wrongdoing at the News Of The World that we now know about," he said.
"He had assurances that Andy Coulson had not just made to him but to Parliament and to the police that he knew nothing about phone hacking.
"What people will judge the Prime Minister for is 'does he show the leadership to sort out this crisis?'.
"I think what we have seen in the last couple of weeks is that he is grappling with the problem previous prime ministers have ducked for very many years."

Rupert Murdoch, chairman and chief executive of News Corporation, on Tuesday denied responsibility for alleged phone hacking at his News of the World newspaper but admitted to a committee of MPs that the heads of his British business had failed to inform him of key developments as the scandal unfolded.
Mr Murdoch, flanked by his son James, described his appearance before the media select committee as “the most humble day of my life”.
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He said that he was “clearly” misled by his staff after originally claiming that phone hacking was the work of a small number of rogue employees, following the first police investigation into the practice in 2007.
Questioned by Tom Watson, the Labour MP, Mr Murdoch said that he was not informed about allegations that News of the World employees made payments to police, given that News International made up only a small part of his News Corp empire. “The News of the World perhaps I lost sight of because it was so small in the general frame of our company,” he said.
“This is not as an excuse. Maybe it’s an explanation of my laxity… I employ 53,000 people around the world.”
Rupert Murdoch often struggled to hear questions and attempted to defer several answers to his son, but was prevented from doing so by questioners. Shares in News Corp rose around 4 per cent in New York at the time of the hearing, amid reports that some shareholders were pushing for Chase Carey, its chief operating officer, to replace Mr Murdoch as chief executive.
Mr Murdoch said he was informed of the conviction of Clive Goodman, the News of the World’s royal correspondent, but was not made aware of further allegations of misconduct by senior reporters, involving blackmail, and lawyers’ apparent mishandling of e-mails.
He said he was also unaware of settlement payments in the hundreds of thousands of pounds made to some victims of phone hacking, which were approved by his son James.
Further, he claimed he was unaware that a previous committee of MPs had found News International executives guilty of “collective amnesia”.
“It is revealing in itself what he doesn’t know and what executives chose to tell him,” Mr Watson said of the News Corp chief.
The phone hacking scandal has gripped the British public public, many of whom spent the afternoon grouped around televisions in pubs, and generated dozens of related messages on Twitter every second, according to Tweetminster.
James Murdoch, deputy chief operating officer at News Corp and head of its international business, opened proceedings by apologising to the victims of phone hacking, although he was denied the opportunity to read out a prepared statement. “It’s a matter of great regret of mine and my father’s and everyone at News Corp.”
Quizzed over out of court settlements, he said he took the decision to sanction the payments over phone hacking in 2007 – including one of £700,000 to a hacking victim – confident that the issue had been dealt with following the arrest and prosecution of Clive Goodman, royal reporter at the News of the World, and Glenn Mulcaire, a private investigator.

Mr Yates, who quit his job as assistant commissioner yesterday, said he saw the tabloid's former deputy editor "two or three times a year" as a friend and had been to his house to pick him up for a football match.

His comments came as departing Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson said he regretted the Wallis appointment - and blamed Mr Yates for telling him two years ago that there was nothing new in the phone hacking allegations.

Mr Yates was also blamed by Scotland Yard PR chief Dick Fedorcio for giving the go-ahead for the appointment of Mr Wallis, who is now under arrest for alleged phone hacking, to a £1,000-a-day press office job with the Met.

Mr Yates hit back by saying that Mr Fedorcio was "over-egging the pudding" and should have carried out "due diligence" on Mr Wallis himself before taking him on.

The clashes came during a dramatic hearing of the Commons home affairs select committee on the scandal attended by Sir Paul, Mr Fedorcio and Mr Yates.

Asked about his links with Mr Wallis, Mr Yates replied: "I would see him two or three times a year - he's a friend. Don't get the impression we are bosom buddies going round to each other's houses. I do not go round his house on a regular basis. I think I have been round there once to pick him up for a football match."

On the decision to hire Mr Wallis, Mr Yates said that he had a phone conversation with the former deputy editor before his employment with the Met and "sought absolute assurance" that there was nothing "still being chased" by journalists over the phone hacking inquiries that could embarrass the Metropolitan Police.

He added: "We should not forget that Neil Wallis is still an innocent man."

In further evidence, Mr Yates said that the Met had offered to explain to David Cameron about the scope of the phone hacking investigation, but said that Ed Llewellyn, the Prime Minister's chief of staff, had "for whatever reason" chose not to inform Mr Cameron.

When asked why he didn't reopen the investigation into hacking in 2009, following new allegations in the Guardian, Mr Yates admitted that he had been wrong.

He said: "Why would we have done, with what we knew at the time?" He then said "we know now what we know now" and added: "God, I wish I'd done something different."

Sir Paul insisted he had had no idea that Mr Wallis might be linked to the phone hacking scandal.

In a defiant appearance before the committee two days after his resignation, Sir Paul said: "I am quite happy to say, knowing what we know now, that I regret that contract [with Wallis] because it's embarrassing. I was consulted in the procurement process but I didn't hire him. I knew nothing to his detriment."

Sir Paul quit on Sunday after it was revealed that he enjoyed a free five-week stay at Champney's health spa worth £12,000. Mr Wallis was the PR for the spa, but Sir Paul said today that he had not known of the link. He had been in pain and in a wheelchair at the time following an operation to remove a pre-cancerous tumour from his leg.

Sir Paul said he had told Mr Fedorcio to take on "additional support" because his deputy was off sick, but did not put forward Mr Wallis's name. "When Neil Wallis's name came up I would have no concerns about that," he added.

A Downing Street official told Scotland Yard to keep the Prime Minister in the dark about Mr Wallis, Sir Paul said. The disclosure caused surprise because Mr Cameron has since made clear he should have been told earlier that Mr Wallis had been paid £24,000 by the Met for PR advice.

Responding to suggestions that he did not trust the Prime Minister, Sir Paul said he had tried to avoid "compromising" him by revealing operational details about an imminent arrest.

He went on: "I think there is something very relevant here: My understanding is that it was exactly the advice of a senior official in No 10, so we don't compromise the Prime Minister.

"A senior official in No 10 guided us that actually we should not compromise the Prime Minister. And it seems to me to be entirely sensible."

Committee chairman Keith Vaz mocked the appointments of Mr Wallis and former Downing Street spin doctor Andy Coulson, saying they looked like "fashion accessories" and sounded incredulous that Sir Paul never wondered if Mr Wallis had been involved in phone hacking.

"You are a police officer- surely you would have had suspicions?" he said. Committee member Nicola Blackwood suggested Met officers were "blinded by friendship" with Mr Wallis.

The former Met boss also said he regretted the failures of the original investigation and appeared to blame Mr Yates for his decision not to re-open the probe.

Asked about visits to The Guardian in December 2009 to tell them that their stories about phone hacking were "exaggerated and inaccurate", Sir Paul said: "Mr Yates gave me assurances that there was nothing new coming ... I think I had a right to rely on those assurances."

He appeared before MPs as it emerged that Boris Johnson is attempting to rush through the appointment of a new Met commissioner. The Mayor has instructed key staff to look into ways to "speed up" the appointment of a replacement to "restore public confidence in the Met".

Mr Johnson has asked his chief of staff Sir Edward Lister to explore how quickly he can start conducting interviews. Sources said he hoped he may even have a new commissioner in place by the end of next month.

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp is in a mess of trouble in the wake of the News of the World hacking scandals, but new allegations from Jude Law and David Beckham could open up the media conglomerate to even more legal problems, this time in the United States.

According to the Daily Mail, Law has alleged that News of the World hacked into his cell phone and that of his personal assistant Ben Jackson when they arrived at JFK airport in New York City. Since the cell phones were then operating on American networks, News Corp could be open to prosecution and law suits for breaking U.S. federal law.

Law, 38, is already suing The Sun, a sister to News of the World, for allegedly hacking into his phone and using the content of voicemail messages for several articles in 2005 and 2006. The articles detailed Law’s arrival in New York City (where he briefly stayed before going to Montreal to film I Heart Huckabees), the hotel in which he stayed, his room number and how much he spent on room service.

"The allegation that they may have been hacked while on private visit in the United States is of great concern to them both,” a source close to Law and Jackson said, reports the Daily Telegraph.

Law isn’t the only celebrity who may have been targeted by News of the World: the Daily Telegraph reports that David Beckham is considering legal action himself. The footballer believes he was the target of hackers throughout the last decade and has reportedly asked his legal team to contact Scotland Yard to find out if his name is among the 4,000 possible victims.

An anonymous News of the World source told the Daily Telegraph that Beckham’s worries are probably legitimate.

"They were always hacking the Beckhams," the source claimed. "David was on the front pages probably more than any other celebrity in the decade from 2000 onwards. If you look at what they have done with him you would assume he is a target.”

However, Beckham is reportedly waiting until there is proof before filing suit. “He doesn't want to start proceedings until we have proof," a source said, reports the Daily Telegraph.

The London Nominees Football Fund, which employs former England and Manchester United midfielder Bryan Robson as an adviser, is a group “investing in football clubs, players, franchises, merchandising and sponsorship in this outstanding growth industry”.
But an investigation by Channel 4’s Dispatches programme screened on Monday night shows members of the fund, including Robson, talking about loopholes that enable foreign owners, with the help of offshore bank accounts and front groups, to buy two English clubs.
The undercover reporters, who claim to be working on behalf of an Indian businessman who makes his money in “India’s illegal gambling market”, meet London Nominees chief executive Andrew Leppard and Robson, then manager of Thailand, in Bangkok’s officially franchised Manchester United Bar.
They are then introduced to Joe Sim, a Far Eastern businessman and adviser to the Thai FA, who talks repeatedly of his close personal friendship with Sir Alex Ferguson. He even passes the phone to the Manchester United manager to talk to one of the reporters when they are out together for a meal.
Sim and Robson both boast how they would get players on loan from United once they had bought one or two of the many Championship and Football League clubs they claim are open to a takeover.

They also claim other Premier League managers, including Kenny Dalglish, Harry Redknapp and Steve Bruce, would help them out with loan signings to make success more likely because of Sim and Robson’s personal connections. These claims are denied by lawyers acting on behalf of Ferguson and the other managers mentioned at the end of the programme.
Clubs offered as potential takeover targets include Leeds United, Sheffield United, Sheffield Wednesday, Leicester City, Cardiff City, Birmingham City and Crystal Palace.
Key to the London Nominees business plan, according to Leppard, is taking over a big club outside of the top flight, getting them promoted in the space of three or four years and selling at a huge profit.
Other ideas mentioned include the selling of training grounds in prime locations to supermarket chains and the employment of PR firms to get supporters to “accept the new owners” by announcing they intend to “put a substantial amount of money into the club.”
London Nominees denied that they, or anyone associated with them, would breach or offer to breach FA or Football League regulations.
Sim denied saying that Ferguson would “call in favours from other managers” but that as a friend “Mr Sim was confident that Sir Alex would help if he could”.

 

Lulz Security hacker group on Monday attacked the website of the Rupert Murdoch owned Sun newspaper, replacing the online version with a fake story pronouncing the mogul's death.
The tabloid quickly took down reports that the 80-year-old had been found dead in his garden after ingesting palladium but visitors to the site were redirected to LulzSec's Twitter feed, which celebrated the high-profile attack.
The group also claimed to have hacked the homepage of the phone-hack scandal hit News International, the Sun's parent company, and the webpage of sister paper The Times was also inaccessible.
"We have owned Sun/News of the World - that story is simply phase 1 - expect the lulz to flow in coming days," a message from the group warned.
Another message taunted "We have joy we have fun, we have messed up Murdoch's Sun"
A News International spokeswoman said the company was "aware" of the attack.
The hacker collective said it was "sitting on their (the Sun's) emails" and was prepared to publicise them on Tuesday.
Lulz has been in the spotlight after taking credit for cyberattacks on high-profile companies including Sony and Nintendo.

London police recovered a computer, telephone and paperwork found in the garbage outside the London home of former News Corp. executive Rebekah Brooks, the Guardian reported.

According to the paper’s account, Brooks’s husband, Charlie, tried to reclaim the bag from a security guard who found it, but was unable to prove he owned it.


A Brooks spokesman told the paper none of the bag’s contents belonged to Rebekah, who until Friday had served as CEO of News Corp.’s British newspaper division. She was arrested by London police Sunday for her role in the phone hacking scandal.

Brooks, along with James and Rupert Murdoch, is expected to testify before Parliament Tuesday.

The spokesman’s account, given to the Guardian, had a friend of Charlie Brooks returning the bag to the Brooks home but left it in the wrong place in their garage.

“Charlie has a bag which contains a laptop and papers which were private to him,” the spokesman said. “They were nothing to do with Rebekah or the [phone-hacking] case.”

The spokesman said a cleaning person found the misplaced bag and put it in the garbage, where a security guard found it and called police.

Police, the Guardian said, are now examining closed-circuit video to try and determine who placed the bag in the garbage.

 

James Murdoch faces being quizzed by the police over claims that he tried to cover up phone hacking by authorising ‘hush money’ payments to victims.

Scotland Yard detectives want to talk to him over the alleged cover-up of the hacking scandal. No date has been set for him to be interviewed. 

But the chairman of News International will face rigorous questioning from MPs today over why he paid huge sums to celebrities whose voicemails were listened to by the News of the World, one of its papers.




The Commons Culture Committee will force him to defend himself against the charge he helped engineer a cover-up and silence victims of phone hacking – which could see him accused of perverting the course of justice.

Labour committee member Tom Watson, who has campaigned against hacking, said: ‘I think the focus will very swiftly move on to James Murdoch now and what he knew and what he was involved in.’


He will testify, together with his father Rupert Murdoch, to the Culture Committee from 2.30pm this afternoon.


Training: Rupert Murdoch has received media coaching ahead of today's interview in order to fend off questions and avoid damaging his company even further

The 80-year-old tycoon has been receiving media training in order to fend off questions and avoid damaging his company even further.

John Whittingdale, Tory chairman of the committee, has said it will be ‘firm’ but ‘not a lynch mob’. However Rupert Murdoch’s biographer Michael Wolff predicted he would lose his temper.

He said: ‘He will handle it very poorly. This is something that Rupert doesn’t know how to do, has never done, has resisted doing and frankly can’t do.

‘Rupert is – on top of everything else – an incredibly shy man and he is also a very inarticulate man. I don’t think he is going to know what to do with the fact that he will be confronted here.

‘It is very likely he will get angry. He will say things that people should not say in public.

‘I know they are drilling him and rehearsing him over and over and over and over again and they are saying to him: “Do not say anything, just answer the questions in as few words as possible.”  

‘Whether he absorbs that lesson or not, I can’t imagine that he will or that he has.’

Pressure for his son James to quit the company intensified last night when a poll found that 65 cent of voters think he should resign.

The ComRes poll for ITV News also found that 57 per cent believe that his father Rupert Murdoch should be disqualified by law from being a company director.