Murdoch told of evidence of illegal payments to police

London: A British parliamentary committee accused Rupert Murdoch’s UK newspaper group, News International, saying it deplored attempts by the company to “deliberately thwart” the investigation into phone hacking. “There has been a catalogue of failures by the Metropolitan Police, and deliberate attempts by News International to thwart the various investigations,” Conservative MP Keith Vaz, chair of the Home Affairs Committee, said in a press release. Without additional resources for the inquiry, he warned that it would take years to inform all the victims. The committee said that up to 12,800 people either by mobile phone or landline may have been affected by phone hacking. Vaz added,“The victims of hacking should have come first and I am shocked that this has not happened.” [caption id=“attachment_45174” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“A British parliamentary committee accused Rupert Murdoch’s News International, saying it deplored attempts by the company to deliberately thwart the investigation into phone hacking. AFP”]  [/caption] The committee said the police had set aside “a huge amount of material that could have identified other perpetrators and victims”. More evidence came to light at the hearings on Tuesday of illegal payments by News of the World to police officers. The Home Affairs Committee took testimony from Lord Macdonald, former director of public prosecutions. News Corp asked him to look at a small number of emails that were part of a larger set of files held by law firm Harbottle and Lewis, the subject of many questions in the hearings on Tuesday. It only took three to five minutes for Macdonald to read the emails and determine that they should be turned over to the police as part of an investigation into bribes paid to members of the force. “I have to tell you that the material I saw was so blindingly obvious that anyone trying to argue that it shouldn’t be given to the police would have had a very tough task,” Macdonald said. Conservative MP Lorraine Fullbrook asked Macdonald: “Although you are acting on behalf of the board of News Corporation, the papers that alleged the illegal payments to police officers specifically related to the News of the World. Is that not correct?” He simply replied, “Yes.” Macdonald presented his findings to the board of News Corp. The meeting was chaired by Rupert Murdoch and James Murdoch was also present. The file was handed to the police, and as a result, Operation Elveden, an an inquiry into corrupt payments to police officers, was launched on 20 June. Returning to the report released on Wednesday, the committee singled out two members of the police for additional criticism. John Yates, who resigned on Monday as assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, was criticised for a “very poor” review of the phone hacking investigation in 2009. The committee also said, “he did not ask the right questions and that he was guilty of a serious misjudgement”. Yates was not the only one up for a lashing. The committee said former counter-terrorism chief Andy Hayman “risked seriously undermining confidence in the impartiality of the police, and accuses him of deliberate prevarication in order to mislead the committee”. During a recent hearing, committee chair Keith Vaz said Hayman was “more like Clouseau than Columbo”. Vaz wasn’t alone in being unimpressed with Hayman. Conservative MP Lorraine Fullbrook pointed out that he had resigned in 2007 after allegations of improper expense claims and improper conduct with two women, including “a female member of staff at the Independent Police Complaints Commission”. “Don’t you understand that the public will just see you as a dodgy geezer?” she asked.