News International has confirmed to the Media Select Committee that it is sending a cast of three to answer questions next Tuesday – former Sun editor Rebekah Wade, the current News of the World editor Colin Myler and a senior News International lawyer.

Les Hinton, who some on the committee think misled them in his last evidence, has emailed from the US to say he doesn’t work for News International any more and has nothing to add.

The committee doesn’t agree and intends to press him to come.

They’re also determined to get Andy Coulson along too. This sounds like a committee with the bit between its teeth.

Parliament rises on Tuesday but the committee can decide to work on for longer into the summer and may well do so.

Permalink||(3) Comments

A statement could come soon from the Met Police.

The Home Secretary has just confirmed in an interview that he’s spoken to the Met Police chief Sir Paul Stephenson, who’s assured him the police are looking at the 2006 investigation again in the light of the new allegations in The Guardian (not, presumably, that “new” to the police as they appear to have come from their own files).

When Alan Johnson’s junior minister David Hanson answered questions in the Commons on the saga, many MPs couldn’t conceal their glee that newspapers might be brought low by all this, just as MPs were brought low by the expenses saga.

Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs lined up to demand inquiries, investigations and Andy Coulson’s dismissal.

Ann Clwyd even said she didn’t feel safe wandering the corridors of Westminster knowing that Andy Coulson might be round the corner.

The Tories’ Chris Grayling had a painful outing saying the story “raised questions” and that a “measured response” was necessary. Still no word from Andy Coulson on the new allegations and whether he knew phone hacking was happening on his watch.

Permalink||(2) Comments

David Cameron believes that one of the high points of his leadership has been the “Flying Squad”/”Get Carter” way he dealt with Tory MPs’ expenses.

He and his team believe this has won him points for “getting it” when it comes to the public distrust of politicians. Can he really afford to risk this right now by standing by Andy Coulson?

Coulson faces a possible pincer movement as the police and the Information Commissioner come under pressure to share more of the information talked about in The Guardian today, while the Commons Media Select Committee is bound to re-open its inquiry into News International’s methods. (The committee is not only Labour-dominated, it also, as of Tuesday next week, has a new member: step forward one Tom Watson!)

Senior Tories report that voters in the Norwich by-election are difficult to rouse, disinclined to back the main parties so soon after the expenses saga. Does David Cameron really want to give them another reason to deny him what would normally be a mighty victory?

Andy Coulson’s only relevant, on the record denial so far relates to whether he knew anything about what Clive Goodman was up to with the Royals’ phones.

He has yet to address in public the allegation of wider, systemic abuse and possible breaches of the law on his watch at the News of the World and what knowledge he had of them.

Until he refutes all knowledge of that in public there must be question marks, very big ones, against his future.

Permalink||(0) Comments