CORRESPONDENCE WITH LINKLATERS 2014‐16

Letter from the Acting Clerk of the Committee of Privileges to Mike Darcey, CEO, News UK and Ireland Limited, 12/12/2014

Letter from Linklaters to the Acting Clerk of the Committee of Privileges, 22/12/2014

Letter from the Clerk of the Committee of Privileges to Linklaters, 23/12/2014

Letter from the Clerk of the Committee of Privileges to Linklaters, 19/01/2015

Letter from the Clerk of the Committee of Privileges to Linklaters, 12/02/2015

Letter from Linklaters to the Clerk of the Committee of Privileges, 13/02/2015

Letter from the Clerk of the Committee of Privileges to Linklaters, 23/03/2015

Letter from the Clerk of the Committee of Privileges to Linklaters, 24/02/2016

Letter from the Clerk of the Committee of Privileges to Linklaters, 9/03/2016

Letter from Linklaters to the Clerk of the Committee of Privileges, 15/03/2016

Letter from the Clerk of the Committee of Privileges to Linklaters, 16/03/2016

Letter from Linklaters to the Clerk of the Committee of Privileges, 17/03/2016

Letter from the Clerk of the Committee of Privileges to Linklaters, 23/03/2016

Letter from Linklaters to the Clerk of the Committee of Privileges, 24/03/2016

Letter from Linklaters to the Clerk of the Committee of Privileges, 8/04/ 2016

Letter from the Clerk of the Committee of Privileges to Linklaters, 12/04/2016

Letter from Linklaters to the Clerk of the Committee of Privileges and submission on behalf of News UK and Ireland Limited, 18/04/2016

Letter from the Clerk of the Committee of Privileges to Linklaters, 30/06/2016

Letter from Linklaters to the Clerk of the Committee of Privileges, 14/07/2016

Letter from the Clerk of the Committee of Privileges to Linklaters, 21/07/2016

Committee of Privileges Tel 020 7219 4432 Fax 020 7219 5952 Email [email protected] Website www.parliament.uk/privileges

From Alda Barry, Acting Clerk of the Committee

12 December 2014

Mike Darcey, CEO News UK & Ireland Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

You will be aware that the Committee of Privileges had opened, and suspended, an inquiry into the allegations that the Culture, Media and Sport Committee was misled, as set out in its Eleventh Report of 2010‐12. One of the inquiry subjects was News UK and Ireland Limited, of which you are now Chief Executive Officer.

I enclose the evidence received so far in the Committee’s inquiry. The Committee will write to your company shortly, setting out the key points from that evidence, the evidence given to the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, and other evidence in the public domain, particularly that given to the Leveson inquiry, and will invite News UK & Ireland Limited’s comments thereon. The Committee will then, as set out in the previously published procedure, warn your company of any criticisms it is minded to make, and give it a further opportunity to comment.

After a preliminary review of the evidence, the Committee is of the view that it is likely to be content to consider the matter on the basis of written material. However, inquiry subjects have the right to request oral hearings if they wish, and the Committee has provisionally set aside the afternoon of Monday 26 January and the morning of Tuesday 27 January for such hearings. These dates will be confirmed in January. To assist us with planning, I would be grateful if you could indicate by 12pm on Monday 5 January 2015 whether or not you expect News UK & Ireland Limited to take the opportunity to make oral submissions in January.

Alda Barry Acting Clerk of the Committee of Privileges

Linklaters Li nklaters LLP One Silk Street London EC2Y BHQ Telephone (+44) 20 7456 2000 Facsimile (+44) 20 7456 2222

Alda Barry Acting Clerk of the Committeee of Privileges House of Commons London SW1AOAA

22 December 2014

Our Ref

Dear Alda Barry

Thank you for your letter dated 12 December 2014 to Mike Darcey, CEO of News UK and Ireland Ltd{"the Company''}, concern!~ !~eJr:!9uiry by the Committee of Privileges into allegations that the Culture, Media and Sport Committee was misled.

We act on behalf of the Management and Standards Committee of the Company, which is responsible for addressing these matters.

Your letter

1 Informs the Company that you will shortly be inviting the Company's comments on evidence received, after which the Committee will warn the Company of any criticisms of it which the Committee is minded to make, and will give the Company a further opportunity to comment.

2 Invites the Company to indicate whether it wishes to make oral representations.

The Committee may not know that the Metropolitan Police are considering alleged criminal conduct by News Group Newspapers ("NGN"} (a wholly owned subsidiary of the Company) in relation to phone hacking. A series of questions has been put by the Metropolitan Police to NGN concerning such alleged corporate liability, and NGN has been invited to attend an interview in February 2015.

The central issue in relation to whether criminal charges should be brought against NGN alleging corporate liability will be the relevant law and the relevant facts (in the context of this newspaper group) as to the "controlling mind".

Any response by the Company to the evidence relevant to this Committee's inquiry would need to address the same, or very similar, issues of the relevant law and the relevant facts as to the controlling mind in the context of this newspaper group.

In these circumstances, the Company has been advised by Lord Pannick QC and by us that for it to respond substantively to the evidence you have obtained would create a substantial risk that the course of justice in

This communication is confidential and may be privileged or otherwise protected by work product immunity.

Linklaters LLP is a limited liability partnership registered in England and Wales with registered number OC326345. It is a law firm authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. The term partner in relation to Linklaters LLP is used to refer to a memb_er of Linklaters L LP or an employee or consultant of Linklaters LLP or any of its affiliated firms or entitles with equivalent standing and qualifications. A list of the names of the members of Linklaters LLP together with a list or those non-members who are designated as partners and their professional qualifications is open to inspection at its registered office. One Silk Street, London EC2Y 8HQ or on www.linklaters.com and such persons are either solicitors, registered foreign lawyers or European lawyers.

Please refer to www.linklaters.com/regulation for important information on our regulatory position. A1 9209342 Linklaters

these contemplated criminal proceedings for alleged corporate responsibility would be seriously impeded or prejudiced.

Furthermore, any report by your Committee which addresses questions of corporate responsibility in the context of this newspaper group would, until the possible criminal proceedings are abandoned or concluded, also create a substantial risk that the course of justice in these contemplated criminal proceedings would be seriously impeded or prejudiced.

Although Parliamentary privilege would of course apply to the Company and to the Committee in relation to the conduct of the Inquiry, we are sure that the Committee will, on reflection, agree that the Committee should do nothing which would create a substantial risk that the course of justice in these contemplated criminal proceedings would be seriously impeded or prejudiced. As the Committee's approach to date has already shown, the Committee will not wish to take any steps which may well prevent a fair trial of any criminal charges alleging corporate liability. Nor will the Committee wish to cause unfairness to the Company by making criticisms, either of the Company or its former employees, in a Report which the Company has not had a fair opportunity to answer because of the constraints imposed by the contemplated criminal proceedings.

We are confident that if the Committee were to seek its own legal advice, it would be to the same effect as set out above. We would be grateful if you would please inform us whether the Committee has sought the advice of the Director of Public Prosecutions, or other legal advice, on this matter.

For these reasons:

(a) The Company asks the Committee to recognise that ii would be inappropriate for the Committee to proceed, at this lime, with any investigation and report into matters of corporate responsibility by the Company in relation to allegations that the Culture, Media and Sport Committee was misled.

(b) The Company declines the offer to make oral representations.

Yours faithfully {,~ Linklaters LLP

A19209342 Page 2 of2 Committee of Privileges Tel 020 7219 4432 Fax 020 7219 5952 Email samsone@parliament. uk Website www.parliament.uk/privileges

From Eve Samson, Clerk of the Committee

23 December 2014

Linklaters LLP One Silk Street London EC2Y 8HQ

~r1r(~I The Committee of Privileges has reopened its Inquiry into the matter of privilege referred to it on 22"d May 2012, relating to allegations that .the Culture, Media and Sport Committee was misled. This has not been publicly announced, and I would be grateful ifyou could regard the information as confidential at this stage.

The Committee Chair has asked me to write to you to request the following further information, which will assist the Committee in its Inquiry:

1. In 2011 you told the Culture, Media and Sport Committee (Ev 263, your letter.dated 1 December 2011), that you were not in a position to tell the Committee who had commissioned the surveillance undertaken by Derek Webb of Mr Tom Watson MP between 28 September and 2 October 2009. For ease of reference, the relevant part of your written evidence states:

Finally, you have asked about the surveillance of members of the Committee and their friends and family. The MSC is currently looking into this matter and its enquiries are not yet complete. However, the MSC can confirm that there is information that Mr Watson was under surveillance by Mr Derek Webb between 28 September 2009 and 2 October 2009. The MSC's present understanding is that three employees were involved in commissioning this surveillance. We do not think it appropriate ta name the individuals involved given the ongoing police investigations.

a. Please can you now name the three employees, or any employees, who commissioned the surveillance of Mr Tom Watson MP, or any other Culture Media · and Sport Committee members? 2. The Committee is also interested in the settlements agreed with Mr Mulcaire and Mr Goodman. Please provide information on: a. Whether the figures for damages and costs in the cases of Mr Goodman and Mr Mulcaire were agreed at the same time, and with both amounts included in the each of the written settlement agreements? b. Whether Mr Les Hinton authorised both damages and costs elements of the final full settlement payments? c. If known, did Mr Les Hinton authorise each element separately, or as one figure inclusive of costs?

3. In relation to the claim brought by Gordon Taylor, who signed the statement oftruth on the Defence to this claim, as originally filed, and on what date it was it first filed with the Court?

4. Which individual instructed Burton Copeland in August 2006?

5. Was Clive Goodman's appeal against dismissal letter dated 2 March 2007 sent by post or email or both? ~7 CLERK OF THE COMMITTEE Committee of Privileges Tel 020 7219 4432 Fax 020 7219 5952 Email [email protected] • Website www.parliament.uk/privileges

From Eve Samson, Clerk of the Committee

Linklaters LLP One Silk Street London EC2Y 8HQ

19 January 2015

Your Ref:

~~s. Thank you for your letter of 22 December 2014 to Alda Barry.

I can confirm that the Committee consulted the OPP before making its decision to resume its inquiry.

The Committee considered your letter at its meeting on Wednesday 7 January. The Committee noted the the Order made pursuant to section 4(2) of the Contempt of Court Act 1981 made by the Hon. Mr Justice Saunders on 31 October 2014 .. It also noted that the question of proceedings. relating to criminal corporate liability was still under active consideration. In these circumstances, the Committee decided that it not pursue that part of its inquiry relating to the possible corporate responsibility of News International for misleading the Culture, Media and Sport Committee at this time.

EveSa-~·-­ Clerk of the Committee of Privileges Committee of Privileges Tel 020 7219 3259 Fax 020 7219 5952 Email [email protected] • Website www.parliament. uk/privileges

From Eve Samson, Clerk of the Committee

Linklaters LLP One Silk Street London EC2Y 8HQ

· 12 February 2015

Your Ref:

By post and email

Dear Sirs

Eleventh Report of Session 2010·2012 from the Culture Media and Sport Committee

On 11 February the Committee of Privileges agreed a Special Report, Matter of Privilege referred to the Committee on 22 May 2012 (HC 1068). The Special Report provides details of the reopening of the Committee of Privilege's inquiry arising from the Resolution of the House of Commons on 22 May 2012, which referred the matter of privilege raised in Chapter 8 of the Eleventh Report from the Culture Media and Sport Committee of Session 2010-12, News International and Phone Hacking[1l to this Committee.

The Special Report does not provide commentary on any submissions received, and nor does it comment on the content of the allegations.

The Special Report will be p_ublished at 0.01 on Saturday 14 February. No embargoed copies will be provided in advance of publicat ion.

The Committee expects you, any representative or other person with whom you have discussed the inquiry, to keep the existence of the Special Report confidential until publication, and not to reveal (or reveal further) the resumption of the inquiry until publication of the Special Report. l~~.J (9vz_~ Eve Sams;.=:.,--­ Clerk of the Committee of Privileges

[ I] HC(2010-12)903 Linklaters Linklaters LLP One Silk Street London EC2Y 8HQ Telephone +44 20 7456 2000 Facsimile +44 20 7456 2222

Committee of Privileges House of Commons London SW1A OAA

Attn: Eve Samson

By Email and by Post 13 February 2015 [email protected]

Our Ref

Dear Sirs

Eleventh Report of Session 2010-2012 from the Culture Media and Sport Committee

We refer to your letter of yesterday (received today in hard copy but not yet by email) and to your telephone conversation with our Michael Bennett of this morning.

We note that you confirmed that so far as our client is concerned the position remains as set out in your letter of 19 January 2015.

You indicated that the Special Report would confirm that part of the Committee's inquiry has not been reopened. You also confirmed that no-one on behalf of the Committee would be commenting further publicly. This notwithstanding, we are naturally concerned, for the reasons articulated in our earlier correspondence, that nothing whatsoever should be said or implied in the Special Report as to why that part of the inquiry that concerns our client has not been reopened. In those circumstances we state for the record that we are disappointed that the text of the Special Report, again so far as it relates to our client, has not been disclosed to us in advance given the material risks and sensitivities.

Yours faithfully l ~ le.rv\ [_.L p

Linklat~

This communication Is confidential and may be privileged or othelWise protected by work product immunity.

Linklaters LLP is a limited liability partnership registered In England and Wales with registered number OC326345. It is a law firm authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. The term partner in relation to Linklaters LLP is used to refer to a member of Linklaters LLP or an employee or consultant of Linklaters LLP or any of its affiliated firms or entities with equivalent standing and qualifications. A list of the names of the members of Linklaters LLP together with a list of those non-members who are designated as partners and their professional qualifications Is open to Inspection at its registered office, One Silk Street, London EC2Y 8HQ or on www.linklaters.com and such persons are either solicitors, registered foreign lawyers or European lawyers.

Please refer to www.linklaters.com/regulation for important Information on our regulatory position. A19477130 Committee of Privileges · Tel 020 7219 3259 Fax 020 7219 5952 Email [email protected] iiWebsite www.parliament.uk/privileges From Eve Samson, Clerk of the Committee

Linklaters LLP One Silk Street London EC2Y 8HQ

23 March 2015

Your Ref:

By post and email

Dear Sirs

Eleventh Report of Session 2010-2012 from the Culture Media and Sport Committee

The matters contained in this letter and enclosure are to be kept in strict confidence.

On 4 March 2015, we were made aware of the involvement of one of the inquiry subjects in criminal proceedings being brought against Mr Andy Coulson in Scotland. Upon receipt of this information we wrote forthwith to the relevant authorities to seek further information. This has now been received and was considered by the Committee at its meeting on Wednesday 11 March 2015. Due to the sensitive nature of the information contained therein, and the involvement of the said inquiry subject, we will not disclose this information.

In addition, on 6 March 2015, the Committee received a written submission which raised for the first time, a number of detailed arguments. The Committee considered this submission at the meeting on Wednesday 11 March 2015 and decided that in accordance with paragraph 3 of the Resolution of 3 July 2012, the matters raised should be investigated further, including giving consideration to seeking further evidence.

In the light of these two matters, and the forthcoming dissolution of Parliament, the Committee has decided not to Report before the end of this Parliament, and to report this fact and the evidence to the House but without an order for printing. In doing so, this allows the evidence to be referred to and considered by the Committee of Privileges as constituted in the next Parliament. All further decisions in relation to this inquiry, will be for that Committee.

In the course of the inquiry, Mr Hinton raised the question of the authorisation of the scope of the email review carried out in connection with Clive Goodman's appeal against dismissal. The Committee in the next Parliament may wish to consider this matter further. This Committee accordingly requests that any documents relating to the review, and in particular to the commissioning of that review, are retained by your clients, even if they would otherwise have been destroyed under normal records management policy.

On 17 March the Committee of Privileges approved a Special Report, an advance embargoed copy of which is enclosed with this letter. This advance copy is to be regarded as strictly confidential until publication. We draw the provisions in relation to contempt for communication or publication during the embargo to your attention. v~~, ~~ Eve~ Clerk of the Committee of Privileges

2 Committee of Privileges Tel 020 7219 4432 Email [email protected] Website www.parliament.uk/privileges

From Dr Lynn Gardner, Clerk of the Committee

24 February 2016

Linklaters LLP One Silk Street London EC2Y 8HQ

Your Ref:

Dear Sirs

Eleventh Report of Session 2010-12 from the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, News International and Phone-hacking

Further to previous correspondence from the then Clerk of the Committee of Privileges in March 2015, I am writing to let you know that the Committee of Privileges held its first meeting of this Parliament last month and has decided to proceed with the inquiry into the above matter. The Committee has agreed a resolution on its course of proceeding in the same terms as that adopted by its predecessor Committee in 2012.

All evidence gathered by the previous Committee has been made available to its successor but the new Committee is considering whether to seek further evidence and will reach its own conclusions on the matters under consideration. We shall be in touch as soon as possible, should the Committee require additional information from your client. In the meantime, the Committee extends a further opportunity to your client to give oral evidence or suggest lines of investigation for the Committee's inquiry.

CLERK OF THE COMMITTEE Committee of Privileges Tel 020 7219 3259 Email [email protected] Website www.parliament.uk/privileges

From Dr Lynn Gardner, Clerk of the Committee

9 March 2016

Linklaters LLP One Silk Street London EC2Y 8HQ

Your Ref:

By post and email

Dear Sirs

Eleventh Report of Session 2010-12 from the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, News International and Phone-hacking

Further to my letter of 24 February 2016, the Committee of Privileges has now reviewed the evidence relating to the above matter and has determined that it requires further information from your client in order to conclude its investigations, as detailed below.

Letter of 23 December 2014

The Committee wrote to your client on 23 December 2014 seeking information, a copy of which letter is enclosed. The investigation as to corporate liability of News Group Newspapers having now concluded, we request answers from your client to the questions contained in the letter.

Other matters

The Committee requests your client's response to the following specific questions. The references to Q or Qq are to the oral evidence taken before the Culture, Media and Sport Committee in the years shown; other documents referred to are attached electronically.

Please consider the following documents: • December 2006 Memo - drafted by Tom Crone to report to Les Hinton and seen by Andy Coulson. • Farrer & Co Record of attendance, 20.01.2010 • Emails Rebekah Brooks and Frederic Michel, Martin Ivens, and Matthew Anderson • R v Brooks and others - Rebekah Brooks evidence on lunch with Goodman on 12 April 2007, Sun Staff Expense Form and extracts from prosecution opening. • 29.11.2006 Email Rebekah Brooks to Andy Coulson with reference to " ...and the full story". • Lord Justice Leveson's conclusions on the reaction and behaviour of News International and Burton Copeland to the Police's investigation in 2006.

1. Is there anything that your client wishes to explain, or to change, add or amend in the evidence given orally and in writing to the Culture Media and Sport Committee in 2009 and 2011, or to the Committee on Standards and Privileges, or Committee of Privileges?

Your client's attention is drawn in particular to: a. 2009, Ev 484-485 - answer to Question 5.

2. In giving oral evidence during her trial, Rebekah Brooks was shown an expenses form for lunch at the RAC Club on 12 April 2007 (enclosed). At this point she was Editor of The Sun. She told the Court that this lunch had been arranged in order to assist News International to settle Mr Goodman's employment tribunal claim. She stated that Les Hinton had approved this idea.

We enclose an extract from the transcript of her oral evidence, and part of the Prosecution opening speech as released to the media.

We also refer you to Rebekah Brooks written evidence to CMS in 2011, where at Ev 222, she stated that she "was not involved in the settlement with Clive Goodman ..."

The obvious inference from the facts in the Committee's possession is that News International desired to prevent a public airing of Clive Goodman's claims that others at News of the World were involved in phone hacking. Is there any reason why this inference should not be drawn?

3. Please provide a copy of the judgment of Vos J in the case of Sienna Miller v News Group Newspapers referred to by Rupert Murdoch in his witness statement at paragraph 214 onwards. Does your client wish to make any statement or comment upon Vos J's reported finding that News International had a "pre-conceived plan to hide emails"?

4. On p.304, paragraph 3.37 of volume 1 of his Report, Lord Justice Leveson quotes from a letter dated 14 September 2006 given by Burton Copeland to the Police: a. Who instructed Burton Copeland to "produce documentation or other material in the possession of an individual" and not more broadly? b. Was your client aware at or around the time, that the scope of the documentation etc. provided did not extend to other journalists, the News of the World or beyond? 5. In volume 1, of Lord Justice Leveson's Report, at Part E, paragraphs 2.60 and 6.43, he discusses the approach of News International to the Police searches. Is there anything that your client wishes to explain, or to change, add or amend in the evidence given orally and in writing to the Culture Media and Sport Committee in 2009 and 2011, and in particular, its evidence as to the scope, extent and handling of the investigation? Your client's attention is drawn, in particular to: a. 2007 - Questions to the then Chief Executive, Les Hinton - Qq 91 and 95

6. In relation to the Witness Statement of Colin Myler to the Police dated 21 December 2011, and the reference to his meetings and conversations with Rebekah Brooks, then Chief Executive, is there anything that your client wishes to explain, add or amend in the evidence given orally and in writing to the Culture Media and Sport Committee in 2009 and 2011, and in particular, evidence provided to that Committee orally and in writing after the Myler/Crone/Thurlbeck meeting took place?

7. Please consider the Record of Attendance for a meeting on 20.01.2010; an email from Frederic Michel to Rebekah Brooks of 03.02.2010; an email from Rebekah Brooks to Martin Ivens; and an email from Rebekah Brooks to Matthew Anderson of 13.12.2010. There are a number of references to the Select Committee throughout the documents. In addition, the Michel email refers to an admission by Mulcaire's barrister, and the Anderson email refers to months spent "moving from Rogue Reporter to Zero Tolerance".

Does your client wish to make a comment upon those references, especially in the light of the CMS Chapter 8 conclusion that News International corporately misled the Committee about "the true nature and extent of the internal investigations they professed to have carried out in relation to phone hacking; by making statements they would have known were not fully truthful; and by failing to disclose documents which would have helped expose the truth"?

8. In its judgment in the matter of Chapman and Abramson, the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal refers at paragraph 34. 7 to an email dated 3 October 2010 from Jon Chapman. The SOT describes Mr Chapman as being "absolutely categorical in his advice that the 2007 email review was of no assistance". Please provide an unredacted copy of that email.

9. In a letter from the Chair of CMS to Rebekah Wade on 9 July 2009 (PS 99), the Chair wrote to ask Ms Wade to submit evidence on the truth of allegations that "illegal phone tapping was in fact a widespread practice, and that News International has settled cases amounting to £1m to prevent this from becoming public knowledge." In her response, Ms Wade stated that Mr Myler was the appropriate witness "to refute allegations that illegal phone tapping was a widespread practice at the paper." She suggested that the Guardian coverage had "substantially and likely deliberately misled the Bdtish public". In the light of the information within the enclosed documents, is there any comment that your client wishes to make on this letter and response? Your client's response to these questions should be sent to the Committee by 24 March 2016. Any final submissions your client wishes to make should meet the same deadline.

CLERK OF THE COMMITTEE Linklaters Linklaters LLP One Silk Street London EC2Y BHQ Telephone (+44) 20 7456 2000 Facsimile (+44) 20 7456 2222

Dr Lynn Gardner Clerk of the Committee Committee of Privileges www.parliament.uk/privileges

By Email 15 March 2016

Our Ref

Dear Madam

Eleventh Report of Session 2010-12 from the Culture, Media and Sport Committee ("CMSC"), News International and Phone-hacking

We refer to your letters of 24 February and 9 March 2016. We were in the process of finalising our reply to the former when we received the latter.

You ind icate in your letter of 24 February 2016 that the Committee of Privileges (the "Committee") has "agreed a resolution on its course of proceeding in the same terms as adopted by its predecessor Committee in 2012." We understand that to be a reference to the Resolution adopted by the predecessor Committee on 3 July 2012. In that Resolution , the predecessor Committee did not assert any authority to conduct further inquiry relating to the matters referred on 22 May 2012 absent the submission of additional questions by the subjects of the inquiry (paragraph 1) and a determination by the Committee that it would explore such additional issues (paragraph 3) . In your letter of 23 March 2015, you indicated that at least one of the subjects of the inquiry, evidently Mr Hinton, made such a submission and that the Committee had duly decided in accordance with paragraph 3 that the matters raised therein should be investigated. It appears. although it is unclear based on the limited information available to us, that Mr Hinton's submission was made after the Committee sent a "warning letter" to him in accordance with paragraph 9 of the 3 July 2012 Resolution.

We seek confirmation that, concerning News UK and Ireland Ltd (formerly known as News International ("NI ")) . the Committee's process remains at Stage 1 as set forth in the Resolution (notwithstanding this being at odds with the reference to "final submissions" in your latest letter). Additionally, in order properly to understand the context in which the Committee's questions to News UK arise, we request copies of all submissions made by any subjects of the inquiry that form the basis of the investigations presently being undertaken by the Committee.

Pending those confirmations and disclosures, we wish here to rai se three threshold concerns: first as to the presumed case against NI ; secondly as to reliance by the Committee on any conclusions in the CMSC Report; and thirdly on timing.

This communication is confidential and may be privileged or otherwise protected by work product immunity.

Linklaters LLP is a limited liability partnership registered in Eng land and Wales with registered number OC326345. It is a law firm authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. The term partner in relation to Linklaters LLP is used to refer to a member of Linklaters LLP or an employee or consultant of Linklaters LLP or any of its affiliated firms or entities with equivalent standing and qualifications. A list of the names of the members of Linklaters LLP together with a list of those non-members who are designated as partners and their professional qualifications is open to inspection at its reg istered office, One Silk Street, London EC2Y 8HQ or on www.linklaters.com and such persons are either solicitors, registered foreign lawyers or European lawyers.

Please refer to www.linklaters.com/regu lation for important information on Linklaters LLP's regulatory position. A31408455 Linklaters

The Case against NI

We simply cannot understand the basis on which the Committee is now proceeding with its inquiry insofar as it concerns any corporate entity.

The correspondence on this matter is prolonged , if interrupted. On 14 August 2012 Linklaters (through John Turnbull) observed that the News Corp Management and Standards Committee, for which we act, was concerned to understand the basis on which the allegedly improper conduct of the employees criticised in the CMSC's report could be attributed to NI, or indeed any corporate entity within the News Corp Group, such that that entity could be held responsible. Specific clarification was sought of the case NI was being asked to answer. Clarification has never been forthcoming.

The request for a reasoned articulation of the Committee's case on corporate attribution was entirely reasonable in 2012. It is now compelling albeit, we suggest, unanswerable. In the intervening years the Crown Prosecution Service has concluded, in the context of thorough and detailed investigation of factual matters overlapping with those the Committee now seeks to readdress, that there was no basis for corporate liability. Of particular note, notwithstanding that the CMSC Report criticised NI for engaging in a supposed "cover up" beginning in 2006, the CPS concluded there is insufficient evidence that anyone acting for NI (or more specifically for its NGN subsidiary, which operated the News of the World) engaged in such a cover up.

The CPS was no doubt able to take into account as part of its deliberations important developments subsequent to the CMSC's Report. For example, the judgment delivered on 3 February 2015 by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal, after an exhaustive review of the evidence, concerning proceedings brought by the Solicitors Regulation Authority against Jonathan Chapman (in-house solicitor Director of Legal Affairs at NI) and Lawrence Abramson of Harbottle & Lewis, concluded that the review commissioned by NGN in 2007 was, contrary to the inferential conclusions drawn in the CMSC's Report, a genuine, bona tide attempt to explore the allegations that Mr Goodman had made in the context of his employment dispute. Although the Tribunal upheld one of the allegations against Mr Abramson regarding the inadequate standard of his work, based on Mr Abramson 's own admissions, the allegation that Mr Chapman had sought improperly to influence that review or that he sought Mr Abramson's cooperation in that regard was firmly rejected by the Tribunal. The Tribunal found that both Mr Chapman and Mr Abramson gave evidence honestly and to the best of their ability and that th eir evidence had been consistent throughout the whol e of the investigation and earlier proceedings. This is rel evant to the CMSC's conclusion about the nature and extent of Ni's internal investigations.

Further, with respect to the CMSC's conclusion that it was "astonished" that NI settled the employment­ related claims brought by Mr Goodman following his dismissal, it is appropriate to co nsider subsequent, almost identical proceedings commenced in the Employment Tribunal by three other former employees (namely Messrs Thurlbeck, Weatherup and Edmondson) who were terminated in 2011 based on their involvement in voicemail interception. Applications were made to dismiss those proceedings based upon the criminal convictions of these individuals and having regard to their gross breaches of duty. Those applications were dismissed by the Tribunal. This is relevant to any suggestion that the settlement of Mr Goodman's employment claim was anything other than commercial and pragmatic, and to any possible criticisms of evidence on this matter.

The subsequent findings by the SRA and the Employment Tribunal, and the CPS's thorough investigation into and rejection of bringing any corporate charge arising out of these matters, eliminates any rationale for further action by the Committee. Accordingly, we respectfully invite th e Committee to terminate its consideration of this matter as it relates to the corporate body at Stage 1, recognizing that no basis exists to issue a warning letter or otherwise proceed with the matter with respect to the corporate body.

A31408455 Page 2 of 4 Linklaters

Impartiality

Secondly, and in any event, we wish to raise a fundamental objection to the Committee making any findings based on the conclusions in the CMSC Report: The CMSC manifestly failed to comply with the principle of impartiality.

As the then Clerk of the House of Commons, Sir Robert Rogers, stated at paragraph 36 of his written evidence (9 July 2012) to the Liaison Committee's Inquiry into Select Committee effectiveness, resources and powers:

"the world has changed. Modern administrative law has brought with it profoundly different expectations of due process and natural justice, and adherence to the European Convention on Human Rights has buttressed those changes".

One of the basic principles of administrative law and the European Convention is th at a body which makes judicial or quasi-judicial findings must have an impartial and independent membership.

The test of impartiality was stated by Lord Hope of Craighead for the House of Lords in Porter v Magill [2002] 2 AC 357, 494, paragraph 103:

"The question is whether the fair-minded and informed observer, having considered the facts, would conclude that there was a real possibility that the tribunal was biased".

A lack of impartiality of one member of a committee who appears to have influenced the others means that the committee as a whole lacks impartiality see Re Medicaments and Related Classes of Goods (No. 2) [2001] 1 WLR 700, 729, paragraph 99 (Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers MR for the Court of Appeal).

Although a Select Committee is not subject to judicial review in a national court, the fairness of a Parliamentary process is subject to review in the European Court of Human Rights. In any event, we are confident that the Committee would wish to consider and apply basic standards of fairness, as set out in administrative law and in th e Convention case-law That was the point made by Sir Robert Rogers

In the circumstances of this case, for reasons we will wish to develop in full written submissions should the Committee elect not to conclude its consideration of this matter as it relates to the corporate body, the objective observer would conclude that there was (to put it at its lowest) a real possibility that the CMSC was biased.

Procedure and Timetable

If the Committee decides notwithstanding the above to proceed with a suggestion of corporate liability, we are entitled to be told in detail the suggested basis of any responsibility and given full particulars of the supporting case. You will appreciate th at this request is not met, as in your prior correspondence, by simple and at times opaque cross-reference to selected pieces of prior evidence and a broad invitation to "explain .. change, add or amend". Such information is essential however for us to provide a properly considered response. We would then wish to make detailed representations on that question and on a number of other issues, in cluding what weight, if any, shou ld be attached to the conclusions of the CMSC Report given the lack of impartiality In the meantime, with re spect to the invitation in your 24 February 2016 letter th at News UK might give oral evidence or suggest lines of investigation, we reserve all rights.

Manifestly, any such future representations would need to be made under a reasonable and proportionate timetable. Th e matters you raise, and evidence to which you refer, go back a number of years and require a considered response with full context Given the history to date, with long periods of enforced hiatus, it is we suggest wholly unreasonable to require detailed responses in a matter of a fortnight.

A31408455 Page 3 of 4 Linklaters

Yours faithfully

Linklaters LLP

A3 1408455 Page 4 of 4 Committee of Privileges Tel 020 7219 3259 Email [email protected] Website www.parliament.uk/privileges

From Dr Lynn Gardner, Clerk of the Committee

16 March 2016

Linklaters LLP One Silk Street London EC2Y 8HQ

Your Ref

By post and email

Eleventh Report of Session 2010-12 from the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, News International and Phone-hacking

Further to my letter of 9 March 2016, in the light of representations received, I am pleased to be able to tell you that the Committee of Privileges will extend the deadline for receipt of your response to Monday 11 April 2016.

I shall reply separately to the other points raised in your letter of 15 March 2016, which I hereby acknowledge.

CLERK OF THE COMMITTEE Linklaters Linklaters LLP One Silk Street London EC2Y 8HQ Telephone (+44) 20 7456 2000 Facsimile (+44) 20 7456 2222

Dr Lynn Gardner Clerk of the Committee Committee of Privileges www.parliament.uk/privileges

By Email 17 March 2016

Our Ref

Dear Madam

Eleventh Report of Session 2010-12 from the Culture, Media and Sport Committee ("CMSC"), News International and Phone-hacking

Thank you for your letter of 16 March 2016. We are pleased that the Committee of Privileges will be engaging with the issues raised in our letter of 15 March 2016, and writing separately with its responses. The Committee will note that our most recent letter referenced the letter we sent to the predecessor Committee on 14 August 2012. We trust that the Committee will be able to address the fundamental issues raised in that letter as well.

While we appreciate the proposed accommodation, once the Committee has engaged with the matters raised in our two letters, we suggest that it will be evident to its members. as it is to us, that simply extending until 11 April 2016 the time by which News UK and Ireland should respond to the questions raised by the Committee is not a workable solution .

Please let us know if the Committee or its staff believes that a meeting to discuss a practical way forward would be helpful.

Yours faithfully uf

Linklaters LLP

This commun1ca11on is confidential and may be privileged or olherw1se proleeled by work produel immunity

Linklalers LLP 1s a limited hab1hty partnership registered m England and Wales wtlh registered number OC326345 II is a law firm authorised and regulated by lhe Sohc.lors Regulation Authority The term partner in relallon lo Llnklalers LLP ls used to refer to a member of Llnklaters LLP or an employee or consullanl of L1nklalers LLP or any of 11s affiliated firms or enlll1es w1lh equ1valenl standing and quallfical1ons A hsl of the names of the members of Llnklalers LLP together with a hsl of those non-members who are designated as partners and their profe ssional qual1ficatlons 1s open to mspeelion at its registered office. One Silk Slreel. London EC2Y 8HO or on www hnklaters corn and such persons are either sohc,tors registered foreign lawyers or European lawyers

Please refer 10 www hnklaters com/regulahon for important 1nlorma11on on Llnklalers LLP s regulatory pos1t1on A31509988 Committee of Privileges Tel 020 7219 3259 Email [email protected] Website www.parliament.uk/privileges

From Dr Lynn Gardner, Clerk of the Committee

23 March 2016

Linklaters LLP One Silk Street London EC2Y 8HQ

Dear Sirs

Eleventh Report of Session 2010-12 from the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, News International and Phone-hacking

Thank you for your letters of 15 and 17 March 2016, the second of which crossed with my letter of 16 March 2016 which informed you of the extension of the deadline for responses from your client. This further correspondence is intended to address the other issues raised by you.

I can confirm that the Committee's process concerning News UK and Ireland Ltd (formerly known as News International) remains at Stage 1 as set out in the Committee's resolution. However, unless your client wishes to take the opportunity which has been offered and which remains open to give oral evidence, the Committee will undertake stage 2 of the process concurrently and accept final submissions from your client. The Committee will then be in a position to move to Stage 3 of the resolution which refers to determination.

On disclosure of documents, the Committee has adopted the policy of sharing with inquiry subjects all evidence of relevance to their individual positions, including any evidence which tends or might tend to suggest that an individual did not mislead the CMS Committee as they concluded in their Report. Confidentiality issues mean that it would not be appropriate to share all evidence received with all correspondents where not relevant to the matters concerning them.

Your letter also provides information, which is noted, and raises questions under the headings of the case against NI, impartiality and procedure and timetable which I turn to now.

The Committee has taken and will continue to take account of your letter of 14 August 2012. The questions to which it seeks responses refer to the activities and behaviours of News International as a whole that may be of relevance to the CMS Committee's conclusions as regards News International or where the relevant person was CEO at the time. The CPS consideration of corporate liability of News Group Newspapers did not address the matter of whether the CMS Committee was misled by News International which is the subject of the current inquiry. Therefore the conclusion of the CPS activity clears the way for this Committee's investigation to proceed but does not obviate the need for it. We note the additional information provided by you in relation to the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal and proceedings in the Employment Tribunal by other former employees in 2011. The Committee nonetheless requests disclosure of the email from Jon Chapman of 3 October 2010 as referred to in the SDT judgment and our question 8. Together with your client's responses to the Committee's recent questions, this information will be used by the Committee in assessing whether there are grounds to issue a warning letter or to proceed further with respect to the corporate body.

The question of the impartiality of the CMS Committee is a matter for the Committee of Privileges to take into account when considering its conclusions. Please provide any further submissions by 11 April 2016.

The suggested basis of responsibility with regard to News International and the supporting case is that set out in the CMS report in chapter 8 and in the evidence published with that report, together with the evidence we have sent to you for consideration.

The Committee looks forward to receiving your responses to the questions set out in my letter of 9 March 2016 by 11 April 2016.

CLERK OF THE COMMITTEE Linklaters Linklaters LLP One Silk Street London EC2Y 8HQ Telephone (+44) 20 7456 2000 Facsimile (+44) 20 7456 2222

Dr Lyn n Gardner Clerk of the Committee Committee of Privileges www.parliament.uk/privileges

By Email 24 March 2016

Our Ref

Dear Madam

Eleventh Report of Session 2010-12 from the Culture, Media and Sport Committee ("CMSC"), News International and Phone-hacking

We refer to your letter of yesterday which we regret fails adequately to respond to our letters of 15 and 17 March 2016. We will be making written submissions notwithstanding the reservations we have expressed. In the interim and for the record:

(i) Our letter of 17 March 2016 was a reply to yours of the previous day. The letters did not cross.

(ii) We note your confirmation that the Committee's process concerning News UK and Ireland Ltd ("News") remains at Stage 1. We suggest it is inappropriate pending your receipt and consideration of our written submissions to refer to Stages 1 and 2 as running concurrently.

(iii) It is plainly disappointing that the Committee appears to be resisting disclosure of all evidence on which it might rely. This self-evidently adds to the opacity of the case that News is being asked to answer.

Yours faithfully

Linklaters LLP

This communication is confidential and may be pnvlleged or otherwise protecied by work produc1 immunity

Llnklaters LLP 1s a limited hablhty partnership registered In England and Wales with registered number OC326345. It is a law firm authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authonty. The tenn partner In relation to Llnklaters LLP is used to refer to a member of Llnklaters LLP or an employee or consultant of Linklaters LLP or any of Its affiliated !inns or entitles with equivalent standing and qualifica!lons A list of the names of the members or Llnklaters LLP together with a list of those non-members who are designated as partners and their professional quahficat1ons Is open to mspeciion at its registered office. One Silk Street. London EC2Y BHO or on www linklaters corn and such persons are either solicitors registered foreign lawyers or European lawyers

Please refer to www linklaters.com/regulat1on for Important information on Llnktaters LLP's regulatory position A31 546499 Linklaters Linklaters LLP One Silk Street London EC2Y BHQ Telephone (+44) 20 7456 2000 Facsimile (+44) 20 7456 2222

Dr Lynn Gardner Clerk of the Committee Committee of Privileges www.parliament.uk/privileges

By Email 8 April 2016

Our Ref

Dear Madam

Eleventh Report of Session 2010-12 from the Culture, Media and Sport Committee ("CMSC"), News International and Phone-hacking

We refer to our letter of 15 March 2016 and to your letter of 16 March 2016 as regards the timing of our client's response. We will not be in a position to respond by 11 April 2016, however, we shall provide substantive submissions by 18 April 2016.

Yours faithfully

1 ~ l{_Ll/)._,fi_ ,s ·LL p

Linklaters LLP

This communlcahon Is conf1dentlal and may be privileged or otherwise protected by work product immunity

Lmklaters LLP 1s a limited llab1hty par1nersh1p registered m England and Wales with registered number OC326345 It 1s a law firm authorised and regulated by the Sohc,tors Regulation AU1honty The term par1ner In relation to Lmklaters LLP Is used to refer to a member of Llnklaters LLP or an employee or consultant of L1nklaters LLP or any of its af11hated firms or entities with equivalent standing and quahficat1ons A list of the names of the members of Linklaters LLP together with a hst of those non·members who are designated as par1ners and their professional quahficat1ons Is open to mspec1ion at its reg1s1ered office One Silk Street London EC2Y 8HO or on www lmklaters corn and such persons are either sohators. registered foreign lawyers or European lawyers

Please refer to www hnklaters com/regulat1on for 1mpor1ant mlormat1on on Llnklaters LLP's regulatory pos1t1on A3161311 3 Committee of Privileges Tel 920 7219 3259 Email [email protected] Website www.parliament.uk/privileges

From Dr Lynn Gardner, Clerk of the Committee

12 April 2016

Linklaters LLP One Silk Street London EC2Y 8HQ.

Dear Sirs

Eleventh Report of Session 2010-12 from the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, News International and Phone-hacking

Further to my letter of 9 March 2016, I am sending you a full copy of the Record of Attendance dated 20 January 2010, previously sent in an edited version as released by the CPS during court proceedings. An unredacted copy was requested by one of the inquiry subjects so we are sending it to all relevant parties. The Committee has no further questions arising from the note at present.

CLERK OF THE COMMITTEE Linklaters Linklaters LLP One Silk Street London EC2Y BHQ Telephone (+44) 20 7456 2000 Facsimile (+44) 20 7456 2222

Dr Lynn Gardner Clerk of the Committee Committee of Privileges www.parliament.uk/privileges

By Email 18 April 2016

Our Ref

Dear Madam

Eleventh Report of Session 2010-12 from the Culture, Media and Sport Committee ("CMSC"), News International and Phone-hacking

We refer to the Committee's letter of 9 March 2016 and to subsequent correspondence regarding the timing and content of News UK and Ireland Ltd's ("News UK") response. We enclose substantive submissions on behalf of News UK.

Yours faithfully

Linklaters LLP

This communication Is confidential and may be privileged or otherwise protected by work product Immunity

Linklaters LLP Is a limited liability partnership registered In England and Wales with registered number OC326345. It Is a law firm authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. The term partner In relation to Llnklaters LLP Is used to refer to a member of Llnklaters LLP or an employee or consultant of Llnklaters LLP or any of its affiliated firms or entitles with equivalent standing and qualifications. A list of the names of the members of Linklaters LLP together with a list of those non-members who are designated as partners and their professional qualifications Is open to Inspection at its registered office, One Silk Street, London EC2Y 8HQ or on www.linklaters.com and such persons are either solicitors. registered foreign lawyers or European lawyers.

Please refer to www linklaters corn/regulation for important information on Llnklaters LLP's regulatory position. A31661697

COMMITTEE OF PRIVILEGES

ELEVENTH REPORT OF SESSION 2010-2012 FROM THE CULTURE MEDIA AND SPORT COMMITTEE, News International and Phone Hacking

RESPONSE ON BEHALF OF NEWS UK AND IRELAND LIMITED

LETTERS OF 23 DECEMBER 2014 AND 9 MARCH 2016

1 Introduction

1.1 These submissions respond to the decision by the Committee of Privileges (“the Committee”) to “reopen” its inquiry into the matter referred to it on 22 May 2012 arising from the findings of the Culture, Media and Sport Parliamentary Select Committee (“CMSSC”) and contained in its Eleventh Report of Session 2010-2012 (“the Report”). We also respond to the letters from the Committee to News UK and Ireland Limited (“News UK”) of 23 December 2014 and 9 March 2016 by which News UK was asked for further information.

1.2 These submissions are made on behalf of News UK, which was known as News International (“NI”) at the time the company was alleged to have misled the CMSSC. The corporate structure, in so far as it is relevant to the Report, is as follows. Times Newspaper Holdings Ltd and News Group Newspapers Ltd (“NGN”) were wholly owned subsidiaries of NI. NGN published The News of the World until its closure was announced on 7 July 2011 and continues to publish The Sun. Within these submissions NI and News UK are used in their appropriate context.

1.3 As confirmed in the Committee’s letter of 23 March 2016, with respect to News UK this matter sits in Stage 1 of the process outlined by the predecessor Committee on Standards and Privileges in its Resolution of 3 July 2012 and subsequently adopted by this Committee. Accordingly, the Committee is presently considering whether it is appropriate to proceed to Stage 3 and issue a “warning letter” to News UK. For the reasons set out in this submission, we submit that the Committee should conclude that the issuance of a warning letter to News UK is not justified and that these proceedings should instead be concluded without referring the matter to the House of Commons, other than to report that there is insufficient evidence of a breach of Parliamentary privilege on the part of NI / News UK and to inform the House of Commons accordingly.

1.4 These submissions address the following issues which are fundamental to the Committee’s analysis of the matter referred to it:

1.4.1 The proper scope of the Committee’s deliberations; namely the CMSSC’s allegation that it was misled by NI;1

1.4.2 The need to recognise and respect News UK’s rights to fairness and natural justice;

1 Confirmed by the Committee’s letter of 23 March 2016.

A31595736 1

1.4.3 As an element of News UK’s right to fairness, the failure of the CMSSC to adequately particularise the details of the allegation that NI was responsible for misleading the CMSSC; and

1.4.4 The status and weight which may properly be attached to the conclusions expressed by the CMSSC in its Report in light of:

(i) The failure by the CMSSC to understand and/or apply established principles of corporate attribution such that its conclusions on whether the corporate body misled the CMSSC are fundamentally flawed as a matter of both fact and law; and

(ii) The actual bias on the part of one member of the CMSSC and the appearance of bias by that member which – as a matter of fact and law – fatally infected the work of the CMSSC as a whole.

1.5 The Committee of Privileges should consider these issues and make appropriate rulings in relation to them before proceeding further with any substantive investigation into the question of whether the corporate body then known as NI should be the subject of a report to Parliament.

1.6 These submissions will first develop News UK’s case in relation to the points made in paragraph 1.4 above and will then (without prejudice to those points) reply to the questions posed in the Committee’s correspondence of December 2014 and March 2016. The Committee need not consider these replies if it concludes, as it should, that the preliminary issues outlined in paragraph 1.4 warrant a termination of this proceeding.

2 The Scope of the Inquiry

2.1 The remit of the Committee is determined by the resolution of the House of Commons of 22 May 2012:

“That this House notes the conclusions set out in chapter 8 of the Eleventh Report from the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, Session 2010-2012, on News International and Phone Hacking, HC 903-I and orders that the matter be referred to the Committee of Standards and Privileges.”

2.2 More specifically, the Committee is required to consider the conclusions in paragraphs 275 and 276 of Chapter 8 of the Report, namely that:

Paragraph 275

• “Les Hinton misled the Committee in 2009 in not telling the truth about payments to Clive Goodman and his role in authorising them, including the payment of his legal fee. He also misled the Committee about the extent of his knowledge of allegations that phone-hacking extended beyond Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire to others at the News of the World (see paragraphs 84, 85 and 91).

• Tom Crone misled the Committee in 2009 by giving a counter-impression of the significance of confidentiality in the Gordon Taylor settlement (see paragraph 118) and sought to mislead the Committee about the commissioning of surveillance.

• Tom Crone and Colin Myler misled the Committee by answering questions falsely about their knowledge of evidence that other News of the World employees had

A31595736 2

been involved in phone-hacking and other wrongdoing (see paragraphs 130 and 140).

• Corporately, the News of the World and News International misled the Committee about the true nature and extent of the internal investigations they professed to have carried out in relation to phone hacking; by making statements they would have known were not fully truthful; and by failing to disclose documents which would have helped expose the truth. Their instinct throughout, until it was too late, was to cover up rather than seek out wrongdoing and discipline the perpetrators, as they also professed they would do after the criminal convictions. In failing to investigate properly, and by ignoring evidence of widespread wrongdoing, News International and its parent News Corporation exhibited wilful blindness, for which the companies’ directors—including Rupert Murdoch and James Murdoch—should ultimately be prepared to take responsibility (see paragraphs 32, 33, 60, 62, 132 and 141).”

Paragraph 276

“276. The effect of these actions and omissions is that the Committee’s Report to the House in February 2010 on Press standards, privacy and libel was not based on fully accurate evidence. False evidence, indeed, prevented the Committee from exposing the true extent of phone-hacking.”

2.3 The question for this Committee is whether there is material in the form of the evidence received by the CMSSC (and as expressed in its findings and conclusions identified in Chapter 8 of the Report) that the actions of a number of named individuals and the corporate body then known as NI should be the subject of a report to the House that a breach of privilege has been committed.2 The Committee has already acknowledged that its task is to determine whether the actions of the individuals in question were intentionally misleading.3 Such a determination would, of course, be a necessary precondition of any finding of contempt of Parliament.

2.4 The extent of the remit of the Committee was re-adopted and specifically addressed in a letter from the Committee to Mr Tom Mockridge (then the Chief Executive of NI) dated 3 July 2012.

2.5 Thus the Committee has a carefully defined scope to its investigation, which is narrower than the range of issues considered by the CMSSC. This is not a reopening of any investigation conducted by the CMSSC including that into Press Standards Privacy and Libel (2009-2010 session) or News International and Phone-Hacking (2010-2012 session), either directly or indirectly through an inquiry by this Committee into whether the subjects of the inquiry may or may not have misled the CMSSC through statements or actions not identified by the CMSSC in Chapter 8 of the Report. Still less can the Committee’s inquiry have any broader remit as to other issues affecting NI, or those who gave evidence to the CMSSC.

2.6 The approach which the Committee has shown in its correspondence to date is not consistent with the proper scope of its inquiry. The letters of 23 December 2014 and 9 March 2016 do not appear to be directed to the question of whether the alleged breach of Parliamentary privilege on the part of NI described in Chapter 8 of the Report should be

2 Erskine May Parliamentary Practice 24th edition pp 275-276. 3 First Special Report of 2014-2015 HC 1068.

A31595736 3

the subject of a report by the Committee of Privileges to the House of Commons. On the contrary, the requests for information suggest that the Committee is attempting to continue an investigation into the facts surrounding “News International and phone hacking” which fell within the remit of the CMSSC and/or attempting to identify other possible breaches of Parliamentary privilege on the part of NI outside those identified in Chapter 8 of the Report.

2.7 Such a widening would be inappropriate as:

2.7.1 It is outside the scope of the Committee’s remit;

2.7.2 It would fail to take account of the events and evidence of the period post the CMSSC’s hearings and findings. In particular, there have been proceedings in the Central Criminal Court and other Crown Courts and in the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal and verdicts and other findings relevant to this issue. These include: (i) the acquittals of Mrs Rebekah Brooks (formerly Chief Executive Officer of NI and currently Chief Executive Officer of News UK), Mr Stuart Kuttner (formerly Managing Editor of the News of the World) and Mr Neil Wallis (formerly Deputy Editor of The News of the World); and (ii) the dismissal of all allegations of professional misconduct brought against Mr Jonathan Chapman. Moreover the Crown Prosecution Service (“CPS”) decided that there was insufficient evidence of the commission of any offence by NGN or NI and no corporate charge was brought. The CPS also decided that there was insufficient evidence of any attempt to pervert the course of public justice by any individual associated with those companies. This final aspect is determinative of the state of the evidence in relation to the allegations of any so called “cover up” at NGN or NI.

3 The procedure to be adopted

3.1 The Committee, like any other public body in the United Kingdom, is obliged to comply with the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (“ECHR”) and NI and its executives and News UK are entitled to the protections afforded by that Convention.4 It is settled law that the protections of Article 6 are available to corporate entities just as they are to natural persons.5

3.2 Article 6 of the ECHR applies here because the allegation which the Committee is charged with investigating involves the “determination of a criminal charge” within the meaning of that term as used in article 6(1). It is clearly established that one of the central criteria for identifying whether a charge is “criminal”, in ECHR terms, is the potential sanction which may be imposed on a finding that the allegation is established.6 This is the case even if some lesser sanction, or no sanction at all, is ultimately imposed. As paragraph 11 of the Report itself recognises, the allegation made here is “grave” and carries with it “potentially serious consequences”. The Houses have traditionally laid claim to very wide powers of compulsion and punishment, including fines and (in the cases of individuals) imprisonment. These are on any view sufficient to characterise the charge as “criminal” for the purposes of attracting the protections of Article 6(1).

3.3 Article 6 of the ECHR provides that:

4 Article 6 can apply to proceedings in Parliament, see for example, Demicoli v Malta (1991) 14 EHRR 47. 5 See, among numerous cases, Yukos v Russia (2014) 59 EHRR SE12. 6 See A v Finland (2004) 38 EHRR 223 at 229.

A31595736 4

“1. In the determination of his civil rights and obligations or of any criminal charge against him, everyone is entitled to a fair and public hearing within a reasonable time by an independent and impartial tribunal established by law.”

3.4 Supplementing the rights which NI enjoys by virtue of Article 6(1) are the protections identified by the CMSSC itself in relation to these issues. Paragraph 11 of the Introduction to the Report includes the following statement:

“A select committee inquiry is not a judicial process but the same principles of fairness and impartiality should apply, particularly where so much is at stake for specific individuals.”

3.5 NI’s basic rights to a fair hearing include, relevantly, the following:

3.5.1 A right to know the charge being brought and the case which has to be met. NI is entitled to a properly detailed explanation of the allegation which it has to meet. This is necessary in order to enable the company to respond to requests for information and to present its case appropriately in answer to the allegations made. In this context this means, at a minimum, specifying:

(i) Which individual is said to have given evidence to the CMSSC which was intentionally wrong or misleading;

(ii) Details of what that evidence was;

(iii) An explanation of why the evidence was found to be wrong or misleading, and why it is said to have been intentionally so;

(iv) An explanation of the basis on which that evidence was attributable to NI.

3.5.2 It is not sufficient for the Committee simply to refer to Chapter 8 of the Report and treat that as answering the point (though this is the approach which the Committee wrongly takes in its letter of 23 March 2016). The accusations set out in Chapter 8 of the Report with respect to News UK are unclear in ways (set out below) that render these proceedings unfair.

(i) The CMSSC made undefined allegations against NI, stating that, with respect to the investigations the company carried out in relation to voicemail interception, unspecified former employees of NI made certain unidentified, untruthful statements to the CMSSC and failed to disclose certain unidentified documents. It is obviously and manifestly unfair that News UK is left to speculate regarding the statements and documents the CMSSC had in mind.

(ii) The CMSSC made various observations regarding the company’s “instinct” and criticised the company for not responding differently when evidence of voicemail interception first started to emerge. Regardless of whether or not these criticisms were fair, they are irrelevant to the matter of privilege falling within the remit of this Committee; namely, whether or not the CMSSC was intentionally misled. The Committee must put aside any of the criticisms made by the CMSSC regarding the manner in which NI may have conducted its business affairs.

(iii) The CMSSC separately criticised the evidence given by three former employees of NI or NGN. From the questions it has posed to the company,

A31595736 5

this Committee appears to presume that the CMSSC intended that the company should be held accountable corporately for these mis-statements as well; however, we submit that it is clear that the CMSSC concluded that NI had misled the CMSSC only with regard to “the true nature and extent of the internal investigations they professed to have carried out in relation to phone hacking.” At most, the CMSSC’s conclusions in this regard are ambiguous, and it is a well established principle that ambiguities are properly read in favour of the subject of the inquiry.

(iv) Both with respect to the unidentified statements and documents made or withheld by unidentified former NI employees regarding the company’s internal investigations and the statements of the three former employees identified in Chapter 8 of the Report, the CMSSC did not consider much less apply the appropriate legal test for attribution of these statements by individuals to the corporate body.

3.5.3 The application by the Committee of a standard of proof appropriate to the charge. This is a serious allegation, involving a ‘criminal charge’ for the purposes of Article 6, and the law is clear that in such circumstances a high standard of proof (beyond a reasonable doubt) is required before the Committee could consider itself satisfied that the charge has been made out.7

3.6 There is a further and fundamental point of fair process relevant here in the light of the proceedings before the CMSSC. For the reasons explained further in section 5 below, the conclusions reached by the CMSSC are flawed because one member of the CMSSC was biased against NI and senior executives of NI and News Corp and in any event gave the appearance of bias, infecting the proceedings of the CMSSC as a whole.

3.7 We invite the Committee to consider the status of the conclusions of the CMSSC as a preliminary issue before any further step is taken in relation to the current inquiry. We submit that for the reasons identified above, and developed below, the allegation that NI intentionally misled the CMSSC is fundamentally flawed and the Committee should so report to Parliament. The importance of an early resolution of these preliminary issues is self-evident.

3.8 The Committee should consider and decide the issues as to the status, nature, scope and weight which can be attributed to the conclusions of the CMSSC before it takes any further steps in the inquiry. It is only by addressing these issues at this stage that the Committee can consider whether it can properly discharge its remit and ensure that its procedure meets the rules of fairness and natural justice. A failure to follow this approach would itself amount to a breach of Article 6 and the rules of natural justice. It is not enough to take these points into account “when considering its conclusions” as the Committee’s letter of 23 March 2016 suggests it will do; by that time, the Committee will have considered the very material which NI considers should be excluded from its deliberations.

4 Corporate Attribution

4.1 For the reasons set out in paragraph 3.5.2 above it is entirely unclear which statements and actions of which employees might be attributed to NI; however, if the Committee is to

7 See Re S-B [2010] 1 AC 678, paragraph 11 (Baroness Hale for the Supreme Court).

A31595736 6

consider whether or not to attribute conduct of former employees to the corporate body, it must be mindful of the controlling law on corporate attribution.

4.2 A finding that a corporate body had been responsible for intentionally misleading Parliament would require the Committee to:

4.2.1 identify a named individual or individuals and identify the allegedly misleading evidence which they are said to have presented;

4.2.2 prove that he or she or they did so deliberately and with intent to mislead; and

4.2.3 prove that such person or persons constituted the persona or alter ego of the corporate body for the purpose of the functions under investigation, namely the presentation of evidence to the CMSSC.

4.3 The third requirement above – namely that the individuals who in fact made the statements to the CMSSC – were the persona or alter ego (also described sometimes as the “directing and controlling mind” or “will”) of the company is a strict legal test which must be met before a finding of this nature can be made against the company.

4.4 The “Identification Principle” has been accurately defined by the Law Commission8 as follows: “The governing principle is that those who control or manage the affairs of a Company are regarded as embodying the Company itself”. The doctrine is often colloquially referred to as the “controlling mind” principle and originates, like vicarious liability, from principles of civil law before being extended to the criminal law in the 1940s. Simply stated, it requires a prosecutor to identify evidence proving that an individual who can be said to be the “controlling mind and will” of the company had the requisite criminal intent relevant to the offence in question. The leading authority at present is the case of Tesco v Nattrass. The House of Lords adopted the directing mind and will theory from earlier cases stating that “The person who acts is not speaking or acting for the Company. He is acting as the Company and his mind which directs his acts is the mind of the Company”.9

4.5 The approach to the corporate attribution principle taken by the CMSSC was fundamentally flawed. It failed to appreciate the relevant legal principles and – inevitably – also failed to apply them properly to the facts as they appeared to the CMSSC. This is a point which the Committee needs to have firmly in mind when considering whether and how to rely on the conclusions reached by the CMSSC.

4.6 Paragraph 2 of the Introduction to the Report contains the following words, which demonstrate that in referring to the investigation conducted by the CMSSC in the session 2009 – 2010, the CMSSC simply failed to understand the basic principle of corporate attribution and the need to assess whether a witness is the “controlling mind” of the company:

“The Committee made it clear that it regarded some of the contentions made by witnesses as straining credulity but, faced with a repeated insistence that wrongdoing was not widespread, and the unwillingness of police and prosecutors to investigate further, it was not possible to conclude definitively that we had knowingly been given evidence which was deliberately misleading or false, either by individuals or by News International itself.”

8 “Legislating the Criminal Code – Involuntary Manslaughter” Law Com No 237, 1996, paragraph 6.27 onwards. 9 Tesco Supermarkets Ltd. v Nattrass [1971] 2 All ER 127, per Lord Reid at page 170.

A31595736 7

4.7 This fundamental error had been repeated throughout the Report which, according to the letter of 23 March 2016 from the Committee of Privileges, forms the “suggested basis of responsibility” of NI.

4.8 More particularly:

4.8.1 The CMSSC failed to distinguish between evidence given by an individual in his or her personal capacity and evidence given on behalf of NI. The CMSSC wrongly sought to attribute the evidence of certain individuals to NI, even where those individuals were no longer connected with NI. In the limited instances in which individuals testified while still employed by NI, the CMSSC wrongly assumed the individuals were then acting “as” the company. These issues seem not to have been considered by the CMSSC.

4.8.2 In reaching its conclusions, the CMSSC failed properly to apply the relevant legal principles relating to the attribution of corporate liability.

4.9 In fact, a careful reading of the Report fails to produce any clear finding that any individual, possessed of the necessary authority to present evidence to the CMSSC on behalf of NI, was deliberately and intentionally misleading in the evidence which they gave.

4.10 These failures by the CMSSC have serious consequences for the status of, and the weight which can properly and fairly be attached to, its conclusions so far as they concern corporate liability. Given the failure of the CMSSC to understand and apply basic principles of law relating to corporate attribution, no reliance can be placed by the Committee on any finding by the CMSSC that it was intentionally misled by NI. Incidentally, the conclusion at paragraph 275 of chapter 8 of the Report that the News of the World misled the CMSSC cannot be right; the News of the World was a newspaper, not a legal entity.

4.11 The particular instances which illustrate the CMSSC’s failure to appreciate or apply the legal principles relating to corporate attribution are set out in Appendix 1. However, by way of overall summary, attention is drawn to the following:

4.11.1 Mr James Murdoch gave evidence on behalf of NI in July 2011. Mr Keith Rupert Murdoch gave evidence on behalf of News Corp, the parent company of NI based in the United States. The CMSSC did not consider itself misled by either of them (which is the only issue relevant to the Committee’s deliberations). The conclusions reached by the CMSSC at paragraph 275 confined the criticism of Mr Keith Rupert Murdoch to issues of corporate governance .

4.11.2 If the Committee concludes – incorrectly it is submitted for the reasons set out in section 3.5.2(iii)) – that the CMSSC believed NI could be held accountable for the actions of the three individuals identified in Chapter 8 of the Report, such a decision would be flawed. These three individuals were: Mr Les Hinton (formerly Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer NI until December 2007), Mr Colin Myler (Editor of the News of the World from 26 January 2007 until 10 July 2011) and Mr Tom Crone (Legal Manager NI until 13 July 2011).

4.11.3 The Report comments at various points and in highly negative terms on the evidence given by each of these individuals. News UK does not accept that any of them knowingly misled the CMSSC but, in any event, none of them was, at the time that they gave evidence to the CMSSC in 2009 (the evidence which is the subject of criticism by the CMSSC), authorised to give evidence on behalf of NI;

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none of them said that they were so authorised nor were they asked in what capacity they were presenting evidence to the CMSSC. Mr Hinton had resigned from his position as Chief Executive Officer 21 months beforehand (and his 2007 evidence was not the subject of criticism by the CMSSC and is therefore not within the scope of the inquiry by this Committee). Mr Myler was employed by NGN, not NI. Neither he nor Mr Crone were vested with the necessary authority to present evidence on behalf of NI. The CMSSC did not suggest any basis for corporate attribution in relation to the evidence of any of these witnesses.

5 Actual and Apparent Bias

5.1 The procedure followed by the CMSSC and the conclusions reached by that body are infected by the actual or apparent bias of one of its members and that conclusion has serious implications for the work of this Committee.

5.2 As Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers explained for the Court of Appeal:

“”Bias” is an attitude of mind which prevents the judge from making an objective determination of the issues that he has to resolve. A Judge may be biased because he has reason to prefer one outcome of the case to another……Bias can come in many forms. It may consist of irrational prejudice or it may arise from particular circumstances which, for logical reasons, predispose a judge towards a particular view of the evidence or issues before him…..The decided cases draw a distinction between “actual bias” and “apparent bias.” The phrase “actual bias”….has been applied to the situation (1) where a judge has been influenced by partiality or prejudice in reaching his decision and (2) where it has been demonstrated that a judge is actually prejudiced in favour of or against a party. “Apparent bias” describes the situation where circumstances exist which give rise to a reasonable apprehension that the judge may have been, or may be, biased…”10

5.3 In 2001, Lord Hope of Craighead, for the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords, approved the statement by Lord Phillips and stated that the test for apparent bias is as follows:

“The question is whether, in the circumstances, a fair-minded and informed observer, having considered the facts, would conclude that there was a real possibility that the tribunal was biased.”11

5.4 In the present case there was actual bias by one member of the CMSSC, or at the very least, an appearance of bias.

5.5 Mr Tom Watson MP (Labour, West Bromwich East) was a member of the CMSSC in respect of both the 2009-2010 and the 2010-2012 sessions. For the purposes of the 2010­ 2012 session, evidence was heard between 24 March 2011 and 10 November 2011.

5.6 There are three aspects to the issue of bias relating to Mr Watson MP:

5.6.1 He was writing a book “Dial M for Murdoch – News Corporation and the Corruption of Britain” at the same time that the CMSSC was deliberating on issues concerning NI;

10 In re Medicaments and Related Classes of Goods (No 2) [2001] 1 WLR 700 at paragraphs 37 and 38. 11 Porter v Magill [2002] 2 AC 357, paragraph 103.

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5.6.2 His public statements and comments in relation to Mr Murdoch and the News Group companies showed his personal hostility and animosity towards them;

5.6.3 He had a declared interest concerning his legal fees in relation to his evidence at the Leveson inquiry.

We address each of these matters in turn.

5.7 On 19 April 2012, Allen Lane published a book written by Mr Watson and a journalist named Martin Hickman entitled “Dial M for Murdoch - News Corporation and the Corruption of Britain”. This is a publication from which Mr Watson must have intended to benefit financially and otherwise. A critical report from the CMSSC would obviously enhance interest in and sales of Mr Watson’s book.

5.8 The Committee will wish to consider whether, in the light of “Dial M for Murdoch”, Mr Watson should have declared an interest to the CMSSC on 30 April 2012, the date on which the Formal Minutes of the CMSSC were recorded.

5.9 The Committee should examine the contents of the book. For present purposes we draw attention to the following extracts:

“This book tried to explain how a particular global media company works: how it came to exert a poisonous, secretive influence on public life in Britain, how it used its huge power to bully, intimidate and to cover up…..”12

“Now that Murdoch’s corrupt grip on our national institutions is loosening….”13

“I know from personal experience what it’s like to be attacked by Rupert Murdoch’s organization. In the book I give a first hand account of the worst moments….But the affair has taken its toll: the failure of my marriage, the loss of friends and intense stress over many years. Even though the mechanisms of intimidation have now been exposed, I still obsessively memorize the number plates of unfamiliar vehicles parked outside my house. That’s what it does to you when you are at the receiving end of the Murdoch fear-machine – the threats, bullying, covert surveillance, hacking, aggressive reporting and personal abuse makes you wary. That was the state I was in when Martin Hickman called me in October 2010, for the first time in ten years….Regularly from then on, we would meet quietly at the Fire Station bar next to Waterloo station…..we would sit in the corner….talking about developments as they happened….Of course I wasn’t working in isolation. Many individuals, most notably The Guardian’s Nick Davies….played critical parts in unraveling this complex scandal. Even so, in the early days, it was a lonely pursuit. We became close in the face of opposition from Murdoch’s UK executives….We were all helped by the brave whistleblowers who summoned the courage to share key information with us…..”14

“I hope our contrasting characters have created an accurate and informative account, albeit one which leaves you in no doubt as to what we think of the events and organization we are writing about….”15

12 Preface. 13 Preface. 14 Preface. 15 Preface.

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5.10 In addition, Mr Watson had displayed open hostility to NI and its senior executives in what he said publicly prior to 30 April 2012. A summary is at Appendix 2.

5.11 Furthermore, Mr Watson declared only one interest to the CMSSC on 30 April 2012 (when the CMSSC resolved that the Report be the Eleventh Report of the CMSSC to the House), namely:

“…that Mr Max Mosley had offered to pay any legal costs incurred by Mr Watson in drawing up written evidence to be submitted to Lord Justice Leveson’s inquiry.”

5.12 No steps appear to have been taken by the CMSSC to investigate the circumstances in which Mr Mosley’s offer was made, nor its terms. It is widely known that Mr Mosley had successfully sued NGN16 in respect of its publication of information which was found to have breached his rights of privacy. Mr Mosley was also conducting a public campaign in relation to his concerns about the conduct of NGN with the aim of securing law reform to impose greater legal restraints on what newspapers could publish concerning the private lives of individuals. Despite this, the Formal Minutes do not suggest that any member of the CMSSC expressed any concern in relation to the question of whether Mr Watson should be considered an independent and impartial member of the CMSSC.

5.13 Mr Watson had commenced a personal investigation into NI and its executives before the CMSSC began to receive evidence in the course of the 2010-2012 session. It is also clear that he already held entrenched opinions highly critical of NI and its senior executives. He attributed various stressful events in his life, including the collapse of his marriage, to misconduct by employees of the company. Mr Watson was not able to consider the issues objectively, as his role as a member of the CMSSC required. He should have declared the full extent of his relevant interests and his failure to do so is another example of bias on his part. On such a declaration, the CMSSC should have found that it was not appropriate that Mr Watson MP sit as a member of the CMSSC insofar as it considered issues relating to NI.

5.14 The facts and circumstances set out at paragraphs 5.5 – 5.13 above show that by the time the CMSSC agreed its conclusions and findings and resolved that its Report, in that form, should become the Eleventh Report of the Committee to Parliament for that session, Mr Watson was not an independent and impartial member of the CMSSC.

5.15 Despite all of this, the members of the CMSSC do not appear to have questioned Mr Watson’s suitability to sit as a member of the CMSSC for the purposes of conducting the inquiry relating to NI.

5.16 In all these circumstances, we submit that there was bias by Mr Watson in that he was not able to consider the matter relating to NI with an open mind. In any event, and at the very least, there was the appearance of bias. In the circumstances described above, a fair- minded and informed observer would conclude that there was a real possibility that Mr Watson MP was biased.

5.17 The existence of bias on the part of any one member of the CMSSC is sufficient to infect the deliberations and conclusions of the whole body, not least because that one member will have contributed to the discussions and conclusions reached by the CMSSC.17 It

16 [2008] EWHC 1777 (QB). Mr Mosley also brought proceedings in the European Court of Human Rights seeking (unsuccessfully) to impose greater restraints on newspapers in relation to the publication of information about the private lives of individual: Mosley v United Kingdom (2011) 53 EHRR 30. 17 In re Medicaments, paragraph 99.

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therefore follows that by reason of the bias (actual or apparent) of Mr Watson MP, no reliance can be placed by this Committee on the conclusions reached by the CMSSC. Those conclusions were flawed and cannot be relied upon as being objective and fair because of Mr Watson MP’s participation in the decision making process.

6 Conclusions

6.1 For the reasons set out above, News UK submits that the preliminary points made above should be addressed at the outset before the Committee gives any further consideration to this matter. However, without prejudice to the points set out above, News UK will now answer the questions. Lord Pannick QC Robert Smith QC Instructed by Arnold & Porter LLP and Linklaters LLP

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Response of News UK to the Requests for Information by the Committee of Privileges

7 Introduction and context

7.1 The Committee will appreciate that, at this stage, which will only be reached if the Committee disregards the preliminary issues relating to, amongst other things, procedural unfairness and bias, as set out above, News UK is answering the Committee’s questions without adequate information as to the nature and scope of the allegation made against it. News UK reserves the right to supplement its responses in the light of any further information which the Committee should provide to it and in the light of the decisions which the Committee reaches on the preliminary issues.

7.2 In considering whether to issue a ‘warning letter’ to News UK for having intentionally misled the CMSSC, which is the only question before this Committee, the starting point must be to establish which individual or individuals are said to have given evidence on behalf of NI which is alleged to have been intentionally misleading. With respect to its allegation that it was misled regarding the investigations carried out by NI into voicemail interception, the CMSSC did not in Chapter 8 clearly identify who or what it had in mind. Separately, Chapter 8 of the Report identified three individuals who were considered to have misled the CMSSC. They were:

7.2.1 Mr Hinton, who was found to have misled the CMSSC in 2009 in not telling the truth about payments to Clive Goodman and his role in authorising them, including the payment of his legal fee. He was also found to have misled the CMSSC about the extent of his knowledge of allegations that phone hacking extended beyond Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire.

7.2.2 Mr Crone, who was found to have misled the CMSSC in 2009 in relation to the settlement with Mr Gordon Taylor and had sought to mislead the CMSSC about the commissioning of surveillance. He was also found to have misled the CMSSC in 2009 in relation to his knowledge that other News of the World employees had been involved in phone hacking and “other wrongdoing”.

7.2.3 Mr Myler, who was found to have misled the CMSSC in 2009 in relation to his knowledge that other News of the World employees had been involved in phone hacking and “other wrongdoing”.

7.3 The CMSSC did not base its critical findings on the evidence of Mrs Brooks or that of any other witness who had worked for NI. Many of the questions posed by the Committee ignore this fact.

7.4 NI has already made the point that, if the CMSSC intended that NI be held accountable corporately for the evidence of Mr Hinton, Mr Crone and Mr Myler (which does not appear to be the case on a plain reading of Chapter 8 of the Report), their evidence cannot be attributed to NI (see section 4 above).

7.5 The CMSSC reached its conclusions in April 2012. At the heart of all of the CMSSC’s findings and conclusions was a belief that NI knew from as early as 2006-07 that voicemail interception extended beyond Messrs Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire and set about to cover up the extent of its knowledge, specifically by misleading the CMSSC regarding the

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investigations it conducted in 2007. Those investigations yielded no evidence to support Mr Goodman’s claim that others within the newspaper were involved in or knew about voicemail interception. The CMSSC did not have any direct proof in support of these findings and conclusions, but rather reached them by drawing negative inferences from the evidence available to it at the time. Since April 2012, a substantial body of information has come to light that was not available to the CMSSC and without doubt renders the inferences which it drew unsupportable.

7.6 The focus of the Committee’s letter of 9 March 2016 is:

7.6.1 The settlement of Mr Goodman’s claim following his summary dismissal from NGN;

7.6.2 The settlement of civil actions by NGN; and

7.6.3 The extent to which the practice of mobile telephone voicemail interception was known to individuals employed by both companies.

7.7 These matters are not part of this Committee’s remit, which is whether the findings and conclusions reached by the CMSSC that it was misled by evidence given by certain individuals can, as a matter of fact or law, be attributed to NI so as to empower the Committee to recommend to Parliament that News UK be proceeded against for contempt.

7.8 In any event, the questions now being asked by the Committee fail to take account of the information and evidence which has come to light since April 2012. In the period since April 2012, the allegations which underpin the current requests for information made by the Committee have been dispelled in terms of attributing misconduct of any sort to either NGN or NI.

7.9 The information and evidence which has become available after the CMSSC reached its conclusions includes:

7.9.1 The evidence heard by and conclusions reached by Lord Justice Leveson, whose Report, published on 29 November 2012, included the following comment in Part E18:

“Given how little was known about voicemail interception when the investigation began in December 2005 and the challenges involved in understanding how the interceptions were taking place and then proving the interceptions, it could only have been (and was) a robust, tenacious, well motivated and skilful team that could have secured such extensive evidence that Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire were driven to admit their guilt.”

7.9.2 Mr Goodman and Mr Mulcaire were arrested on 8 August 2006 in connection with what became known as Operation Caryatid. Years later, the Metropolitan Police Service (“MPS”) disclosed to the Leveson Inquiry19 the fact that their search of Mr Mulcaire’s home and business premises produced some 11,000 pages of paper including lists of names, addresses, landline and mobile telephone numbers together with voicemail access numbers and PIN codes. NGN did not have these materials – they belonged to Mr Mulcaire and they were not made publicly available since they remained documentary exhibits in the possession of the MPS.

18 Paragraph 5.69, page 323, Volume 1. 19 Paragraph 2.63, page 289, Volume 1.

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These documents only became available when they were provided in part by the MPS to individual claimants and NGN by way of disclosure in the civil claims and thereafter in the pre-action disclosure regime (established by Mr Justice Vos in February 2012). NGN has never been provided with a full set of Mr Mulcaire’s notes. Names of NGN employees were recorded in the top left hand corner of some of the pages of these notes, indicating that they knew of or were involved in the particular activity of Mr Mulcaire to which those notes related – “the top left schedule”. This material was to become the most compelling evidence that several editors and journalists on the News Desk of the News of the World had commissioned voicemail interception by Mr Mulcaire. It has only ever been available, in part, to NGN on a limited basis and even then with a more substantial volume only available from 2012 onwards. Therefore, the evidence provided to the CMSSC in 2009 must be considered with a clear understanding that a considerable volume of this key evidence was unknown to anyone within NGN until no earlier than a date approximately two years after evidence was given to the CMSSC.

7.9.3 On 11 December 2015, the CPS decided not to prosecute any corporate body in the NI group. The CPS issued a statement entitled “No further action to be taken in Operations Weeting and Golding”. It is clear from this statement that:

(i) The CPS had reviewed the evidence it had obtained in relation to the original police investigation into phone hacking in 2006, the civil settlements, and the email deletion policy of the company.

(ii) Taking into account the civil settlements and the email deletion policy, the CPS was satisfied that there was no basis for alleging any attempt to pervert the course of public justice and accordingly that no corporate criminal charge was appropriate on that basis.

(iii) The CPS had concluded that there was no basis for alleging that any member of the board of NGN or NI had knowledge of mobile telephone voicemail hacking at the time that that activity was taking place.

7.9.4 Juries acquitted Mrs Brooks, Mr Kuttner, and Mr Wallis. Mr Wallis’ prosecution depended on showing that he was aware that phone hacking was taking place. The jury found that he did not.

7.9.5 Whilst Mr Andy Coulson (the former Editor of the News of the World) was convicted, at the time he was in post, a very large number of people worked for the newspaper, including many with editorial roles. The vast majority of these people had no involvement in unlawful mobile telephone voicemail interception and were unaware that the practice was being carried out. In any event, as the CPS properly concluded, at no time could Mr Coulson’s actions or knowledge be attributed to NGN because, in his position as Editor of the News of the World, he did not act as the persona of the company. Moreover, with respect to the question of knowledge of NI, in 2006-07 and for years thereafter, Mr Coulson took the position within NI that he was unaware of the illegal activities of Mr Goodman and Mr Mulcaire. This was also the position that Mr Coulson adopted in his evidence to the CMSSC on 21 July 2009 when he appeared with Mr Kuttner. An extract from his evidence to the CMSSC on that date is set out in Appendix 6.

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7.9.6 The evidence generated by the MPS investigations and provided to News UK by the CPS establishes that after the convictions of Mr Goodman and Mr Mulcaire in 2007, the Board of Directors of NGN and NI and its senior executives did not become aware of substantiated evidence of any wider unlawful actions committed by members of staff at the News of the World until the allegations started to become public knowledge in the latter part of 2010. This substantiates what was said by Mr James Murdoch and Mrs Brooks to the CMSSC on 19 July 2011.

7.9.7 The evidence produced as a result of the intensive and detailed investigation by the MPS is overwhelmingly in favour of the conclusion that not one of the Directors of NGN or NI, nor the Managing Editor of the News of the World, nor the Company Secretary, nor in particular the Chief Executive or any of his management team, knew that mobile telephone voicemail interception extended beyond Mr Goodman and Mr Mulcaire until after the evidence given to the CMSSC.

7.9.8 Every opportunity has been afforded to the MPS to attempt to prove a case against “others at News of the World” (to use the CMSSC’s expression)20 and with limited exceptions, that process has either resulted in a decision not to prosecute or in acquittals of those who were tried.

7.9.9 Despite the number and the length of trials relating to the combined investigations by the MPS, only eight journalists have been convicted (some on the basis of a guilty plea).

7.9.10 The Solicitors’ Disciplinary Tribunal proceedings in relation to Mr Chapman and Mr Lawrence Abramson which showed that, when the allegations of widespread knowledge of hacking made by Mr Goodman were investigated, the company’s lawyer Mr Chapman had acted appropriately but that the work done by Mr Abramson of the lawyers instructed by the company had fallen below the standard which the company was entitled to expect. NGN had no means of knowing this at the time and instead acted entirely reasonably in relying on the conclusions of both in-house and external counsel.

7.10 By reason of the above developments, it is clear that there is no proper foundation for a claim that there was a “pervasive culture” of phone hacking, widely known by senior staff, at the News of the World – as was once suggested. The responses to the individual questions set out below draw further on the information and evidence which has emerged since April 2012 where relevant to the particular response.

7.11 The evidence given to the CMSSC which was properly attributed to NI was that given by Mr James Murdoch and that is the evidence which is relevant to the issue under investigation by this Committee; namely whether the CMSSC was misled by NI. NI relied, and continues to rely, on the evidence given by Mr James Murdoch. It is an accurate and fair summary of the circumstances in which NI came to discover the extent of unlawful mobile telephone voicemail interception at the News of the World.21 Appendix 3 to this paper sets out relevant extracts from Mr James Murdoch’s evidence.

7.12 The CMSSC also heard evidence from Mrs Brooks who was the former Chief Executive Officer (appointed September 2009, resigned 15 July 2011 and re-appointed September

20 Paragraph 275 of the Report – first ‘bullet point.’ 21 The Report, Ev 16 – 19th July 2011.

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2015). She did not give evidence to the CMSSC until 19 July 201122 (supplemented by written responses) by which time Mrs Brooks had resigned and she had been arrested and interviewed by the MPS only days beforehand. Her 2011 evidence was not the subject of criticism by the CMSSC. Mrs Brooks was acquitted of all alleged wrongdoing following a trial lasting eight months and in the course of which many allegations of misconduct were presented to her and duly rejected by the jury. Reference is made below to Mrs Brooks’ evidence where relevant to the issues which the Committee has raised.

8 Requests for Information in the letter of 9 March 2016

9 Question 1

“Is there anything that your client wishes to explain, or to change, add or amend in the evidence given orally and in writing to the Culture Media and Sport Committee in 2009 and 2011, or to the Committee on Standards and Privileges, or Committee of Privileges?

Your client’s attention is drawn in particular to:

a. 2009, Ev 484-485 – answer to Question 5”23

Response 9.1 This question illustrates the erroneous approach to corporate attribution explained in section 4 above. News UK cannot “explain … change, add or amend” evidence which was not presented on behalf of the company. It can comment upon the evidence given by individuals and it can provide further information for the assistance of the Committee which it does as follows. The question (and questions 2 – 9 and the Requests for Information) suggests that the Committee is not focusing – as it is required to do – on whether NI as a corporate entity misled the CMSSC.

9.2 As to Mrs Brooks’ letter to the CMSSC, the CMSSC’s question in its letter related to payments made to Mr Goodman “as part of an understanding that he maintains his silence over his involvement with the Mulcaire episode.” There is no evidence that Mrs Brooks was aware of any payments being made for that purpose; Mrs Brooks was acquitted on charges to which this was a relevant issue.

10 Question 2

“In giving oral evidence during her trial, Rebekah Brooks was shown an expenses form for lunch at the RAC Club on 12 April 2007 (enclosed). At this point she was Editor of The Sun. She told the Court that this lunch had been arranged in order to assist News International to settle Mr Goodman’s employment tribunal claim. She stated that Les Hinton had approved this idea.

22 The Report, Ev 41. 23 The reference is to Supplementary written evidence submitted by Mrs Brooks, Chief Executive Officer, NI. Question 5 and the written answer thereto is as follows: “5. Are you aware of any other payments made to Clive Goodman as part of an understanding that he maintains his silence over his involvement with the Mulcaire episode?” “It was, I hope, made very clear to you, in my letter to you of 4 November, that the payment made to Mr Goodman following his trial and imprisonment (the only such payment) was a bona fide settlement of an employment-related claim, brokered between lawyers, and was not “part of an understanding that he maintains his silence over his involvement with the Mulcaire episode”.

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We enclose an extract from the transcript of her oral evidence, and part of the Prosecution opening speech as released to the media.

We also refer you to Rebekah Brooks written evidence to CMS in 2011, where at Ev 222, she stated that she “was not involved in the settlement with Clive Goodman …”

The obvious inference from the facts in the Committee’s possession is that News International desired to prevent a public airing of Clive Goodman’s claims that others at News of the World were involved in phone hacking. Is there any reason why this inference should not be drawn?”

Response 10.1 This question relates to a lunch which Mrs Brooks had with Mr Goodman on 12 April 2007, the suggestion apparently being that the inference could be drawn that NGN wanted to prevent a public airing of Mr Goodman’s claims.

10.2 Some background and context to the issues as they relate to Mr Goodman should assist the Committee.

10.3 Mr Goodman was convicted on 29 November 2006 when he entered a plea of guilty and was sentenced on 26 January 2007. He was summarily dismissed by NGN on the grounds of gross misconduct by letter signed by Mr Hinton dated 5 February 2007. Thereafter, Mr Goodman alleged in the following correspondence, which he sent to NGN, that senior figures working for the News of the World knew about the practice of mobile telephone voicemail interception.

10.4 On 2 March 2007, Mr Goodman wrote to Mr Daniel Cloke (then Head of Human Resources) in a letter copied to Mr Hinton, alleging:

10.4.1 That the actions which had led to the charges brought against him, Mr Goodman, had been carried out with the full knowledge and support of the News of the World’s Editor, Mr Coulson, and Deputy Editor, Mr Wallis.

10.4.2 That payment for Mr Mulcaire’s services was arranged by the Managing Editor, Mr Kuttner.

10.4.3 That other members of staff, including the News Editor at the News of the World, Mr Ian Edmondson, were carrying out the same illegal procedures.

10.5 Mr Goodman repeated these allegations at the hearing of his appeal against dismissal on 20 March 2007.

10.6 NGN took steps to investigate the allegations made by Mr Goodman. This included:

10.6.1 Mr Coulson denied that he had any knowledge of the actions of Mr Goodman and Mr Mulcaire. In due course, Mr Coulson maintained this denial before the CMSSC in 2009 and continued to do so throughout his evidence at his trial. Later, Mr Coulson was found by the jury to have knowledge of and involvement in the unlawful interception of voicemails, and a small number of other employees of the News of the World accepted their involvement in the same. However, there was nothing to suggest that the directors and senior executives of NI were aware of Mr Coulson’s involvement at a time relevant to the settlement with Mr Goodman).

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10.6.2 The reaction of the three employees who were alleged to have known about unlawful voicemail interception was sought. They “flatly denied that there was any truth to this allegation”.24

10.6.3 Knowledge that the police investigation in 2006 and 2007 resulted in charges being brought against Mr Mulcaire and Mr Goodman – only.

10.6.4 In order to respond to Mr Goodman’s allegations, Mr Cloke and Mr Chapman (then a member of the in house legal team) examined a series of emails between Mr Goodman and others. The emails were identified by reference to the time parameters and subject matter suggested by Mr Goodman. Neither Mr Cloke nor Mr Chapman identified any evidence to support Mr Goodman’s allegations in the documents they examined.

10.6.5 Mr Hinton then directed the additional step of instructing an independent and reputable firm of solicitors, Harbottle & Lewis, to carry out a further review. The partner responsible was Mr Abramson. Mr Chapman sent instructions to Mr Abramson on 10 May 2007 which included the following:

“Because of the bad publicity that could result in an allegation in an employment tribunal that we had covered up potentially damaging evidence found on our e mail trawl, I would ask that you, or a colleague, carry out an independent review of the e mails in question and report back to me with any findings of material that could possibly tend to support either of [Mr Goodman’s] contentions.”

10.6.6 Having carried out the work instructed, Mr Abramson reported that he could find no reasonable evidence in support of the allegations made by Mr Goodman.

10.7 It was only later – when the evidence taken by the MPS from Mr Mulcaire’s home and office became available – that there became reason to question the work done by Mr Chapman and Mr Abramson. This occurred after evidence was given to the CMSSC in 2009. At the time that Mr Chapman and Mr Abramson advised and evidence was given to the CMSSC in 2009, NGN did not have available to it the evidence which showed the apparent extent of phone hacking at the News of the World. It follows that the company could not have taken steps to cover up such evidence.

10.8 It is right that later, Mr Chapman and Mr Abramson were subject to disciplinary proceedings brought by the Solicitors’ Regulation Authority (“the SRA”) and criticisms were made of their work. However, so far as NGN was concerned in May 2007 and when evidence was given to the CMSSC in 2009, there was no reason to doubt that Harbottle & Lewis had carried out the careful, competent and professional job which NGN was entitled to expect of them.

10.9 The SRA disciplinary proceedings against Mr Chapman were based on allegations that he had not performed his work to the appropriate standard in failing to identify and/or to report to NI that the emails reviewed by him contained evidence that senior staff at the News of the World were aware of mobile telephone voicemail interception. It was further alleged that Mr Chapman had sought to exercise excessive influence over the content and substance of the advice given by Harbottle & Lewis.

10.10 The question for the Solicitors’ Disciplinary Tribunal (“the SDT”) in the case of Mr Abramson was whether he had allowed himself to be improperly influenced by Mr

24 Telephone Note, subject ‘Daniel Cloke’, dated 17 May 2007.

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Chapman and whether he had failed to record the existence of evidence that staff at the newspaper were aware of mobile telephone voicemail interception.

10.11 The SDT obtained a significant amount of evidence, including material which was subject to legal professional privilege. The findings of the SDT have now been published. Both Mr Chapman and Mr Abramson were found to have given truthful evidence and to have been honest and credible witnesses. The Tribunal found that their evidence had been consistent throughout the whole of the investigation and earlier proceedings, including those before the CMSSC25 on 6 September 2011 and at the Leveson Inquiry.

10.12 The allegation that Mr Chapman was in some way involved in a deliberate “cover up” or that he sought Mr Abramson’s co-operation in that regard was firmly rejected by the Tribunal. The Tribunal said this at paragraph 35.3 of its Decision:

“The Tribunal was mindful of the danger of looking at the factual matrix with the crystal clear vision of hindsight. As at October 2014 when this case was heard, the Tribunal, the parties and their legal representatives, the solicitors’ profession and the general public knew considerably more about phone hacking and associated criminal activity than anyone did in 2007. The Tribunal therefore put hindsight very firmly out of its mind when considering these allegations. What the Tribunal had to do was put itself in the minds of the Respondents in May 2007.”

10.13 Emails were provided to Mr Abramson which were later relied on by the prosecution in the case against Mr Coulson and which, by his own admission, Mr Abramson should have brought to the attention of NI in 2007. It will readily be appreciated that this is inconsistent with a “cover up” – the relevant material was sent to external solicitors for their advice. In the event, that advice was not of the quality which NGN was entitled to expect and the Tribunal so found against Mr Abramson. But this is something which NGN did not know of at the time, still less encourage. Had Mr Abramson carried out his responsibilities in a competent manner in 2007, the events that followed, including the evidence provided to the CMSSC, would have been very different.

10.14 The above account sets out the background to the settlement with Mr Goodman: he was convicted and dismissed; he made, in correspondence sent to NGN, allegations of broader knowledge of phone hacking at the News of the World; the company took steps to investigate the allegations; it provided relevant information to its solicitors and was let down by them in the advice it had received. Moreover, the advice given by Harbottle & Lewis was, in any event, based on an incomplete factual background. The documents they considered formed only a small subset of the evidence now known to be available, much of which was not in NGN’s possession when Mr Goodman’s allegations were investigated. Mr Edmondson maintained his innocence at his first trial. He only accepted his guilt much later, in October 2014.

10.15 Mr Goodman left NGN’s employment on 5 February 2007. Mr Kuttner was appointed Managing Editor of the News of the World in 1987 and retired on 25 September 2009. He was therefore in place during the whole of the period relevant to the events involving Mr Goodman (Mr Kuttner gave oral evidence to the CMSSC on 21 July 2009).

10.16 Mr Kuttner was the member of management authorised by NGN to review and approve any request for payment under contracts associated with Mr Mulcaire. In the course of Mr Kuttner’s trial, the prosecution alleged that he knew of the unlawful activities of Mr

25 The Report, Ev 58.

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Goodman, Mr Coulson and Mr Mulcaire and was a party to the conspiracy proved against them. Mr Kuttner’s evidence was that he had no such knowledge. The jury clearly agreed with Mr Kuttner and acquitted him.

10.17 As to the settlement with Mr Goodman, NGN received advice that Mr Goodman had a valid claim against the company based on the company’s failure to follow a fair procedure on the termination of his employment. He also alleged that he had been the subject of discrimination and unequal treatment and intimated a claim under the Public Interest Disclosure Act as a result of which his claim was not subject to the upper limit of £60,000 by way of compensation for unfair dismissal. As Mr Chapman informed the CMSSC on the 6 September 2011, NGN was faced with a stark choice: settle at a reasonable figure or end up in a Tribunal.26 Even though Mr Goodman had been convicted of a criminal offence, NGN was advised that his employment rights had been breached by NGN on his termination. Any responsible employer in such circumstances would seek to settle the claim on terms which seemed appropriate at the time. This is what NGN did. On the basis of the information and advice available to it in 2007, a decision to defend Mr Goodman’s claims would have come at a considerable cost in various respects for no benefit to the company, as was acknowledged by the CMSSC itself.27

10.18 Mr Goodman’s claim against NGN was settled by an undated compromise agreement signed prior to 31 October 2007.

10.19 In the Committee’s letter, NGN is asked if there is a reason why the “obvious” inference should not be drawn that Mr Goodman’s claim was settled to prevent it from being publicly aired. The answer is that the drawing of such an inference as the sole or dominating influence would not be appropriate for these reasons:

10.19.1 The background to the settlement of Mr Goodman’s claim against NGN is detailed above and is reflected in the evidence given to the CMSSC by Mr Chapman (footnote 25).

10.19.2 The contents of the letter written by Mrs Brooks on 12 September 2011 (referred to in the context of the Committee’s question 2) are entirely consistent with her evidence and the established facts.

10.19.3 Airing any dispute in public has implications for the reputation of a company and this is a standard consideration for any litigant, a point which the CMSSC itself acknowledged. This is the case even if – perhaps particularly if – the allegations are thought to be unfounded based on what was known at the time. A desire to limit reputational damage formed part of NGN’s thinking at the time of the settlement with Mr Goodman. But this is far from a conclusion that this factor was the only element in NGN’s decision-making, still less the determinative one. The expression “cover up” is a pejorative term which is not appropriate to describe the decision making process adopted by the company here.

10.20 The SDT, which heard the evidence of Mr Chapman and Mr Abramson (including material protected by legal profession privilege), concluded that the review which was conducted by

26 “…this is a pragmatic, commercial business decision, to my mind and can be characterised as that. Many companies, particularly big companies, pay out on employment claims of little or no merit for pragmatic reasons, because they do not want stuff to be raked up. Even if allegations that are unfounded are made in the context of a Tribunal, those who wish to believe those allegations will believe them” – Ev 66. See also the incorrect statement in the Report at paragraph 97. 27 The Report, Chapter 3, paragraph 66.

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Harbottle & Lewis was independent and that no improper pressure had been brought to bear on Harbottle & Lewis’ findings by Mr Chapman.

10.21 Accordingly, it is clear that, far from seeking to cover up any allegations relating to the unlawful interception of voicemails, Mr Hinton took active steps to ascertain whether there was truth in the allegations made by Mr Goodman. Had Mr Hinton known that the allegations were true, it is inconceivable that he would have dismissed Mr Goodman or ordered any review (whether independent or otherwise) to be conducted, as either course would have risked his own exposure.

10.22 In those circumstances it would be wholly inconsistent with the known facts for an inference to be drawn that, by seeking to settle Mr Goodman’s employment claims, individuals employed by NI sought to cover up more widespread involvement in the unlawful interception of voicemails at the News of the World.

Mrs Brooks’ Letter dated February 2010

10.23 As regards Mrs Brooks’ answer to the CMSSC’s “Question 5”, set out in her letter of February 2010, its contents are correct: the settlement of Mr Goodman’s claim was bona fide; it was brokered between lawyers; it was not part of any “understanding” that Mr Goodman would “maintain his silence over his involvement with the Mulcaire episode”.

10.24 Mrs Brooks made clear in her letter of February 2010 that her answer to this effect was no more than a reiteration of the answer already given in her earlier letter dated 4 November 2011, in which she quoted directly, and at length, Mr Chapman, News International’s then Director of Legal Affairs, who said:

“I should conclude, in relation to Mr Goodman, by stating that, in my view, there was nothing at all underhand about this compromise agreement. It was achieved following negotiation with a senior employment lawyer from a City firm and was implemented through a standard-form News International precedent. It was entered into in July 2007, some time after Mr Goodman’s release from prison, and in my view, far too late for any silence effectively to be “bought” (which I know has been the suggestion from some quarters). The sum paid to Mr Goodman was not, in any event, of an amount consistent with a desire on either side to buy silence but was entirely consistent with a normal unfair dismissal settlement. It should be noted that Mr Goodman, through his lawyer, had initially intimated a potential claim against News Group Newspapers Limited under the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998 (the so-called whistle-blowing legislation) on the basis that his employment had been terminated for “whistle blowing”. Had News Group Newspapers Limited really wished and intended to pay Mr Goodman a substantial amount to “buy his silence” under the guise of a compromise agreement, we could readily have accepted this as a claim, as such a claim carries unlimited compensation at tribunal and this would then have allowed payment of a far larger amount to Mr Goodman. In fact, we resisted that claim very strongly from the outset and it was ultimately dropped by Mr Goodman and his lawyer.”

10.25 The above statement by Mr Chapman has not been questioned by the CMSSC or this Committee.

Mrs Brooks’ Letter dated 12 September 2011

10.26 As regards Mrs Brooks’ letter of 12 September 2011, it was accurate in stating that Mrs Brooks was not involved in the settlement with Mr Goodman. She was not, as Mr Chapman’s evidence well establishes.

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10.27 It was entirely accurate for Mrs Brooks to state, in her letter of 12 September 2011, that she was “not involved in the settlement with Clive Goodman”. The settlement was brokered between lawyers – on NI’s side, by Mr Chapman. Mrs Brooks was at this time the editor of The Sun. She was not involved in the settlement of Mr Goodman’s claim.

10.28 Question 2 of the Committee’s letter mischaracterises Mrs Brooks’ evidence to the jury during the course of her trial. Nothing she said to the jury in July 2014 casts any doubt on the accuracy of her letter of 12 September 2011. The sum of her evidence was not (as the question inaccurately puts it) to the effect that she had assisted NI “to settle Clive Goodman’s employment tribunal claim”. Mrs Brooks told the jury that, in April 2007, she had offered Mr Goodman a short-term contract in a non-reporting role at The Sun (working on a Diana, Princess of Wales memorial tribute magazine). She also told the jury that her objective in so doing was to meet Mr Goodman’s perceived grievance in the hope of bringing an end to his dispute with NGN. But she also told the jury that, when making this offer, she did not “discuss the details of what he [Mr Goodman] may be doing with the company”. She said that “whatever he was doing with the company and whatever his allegations were or the procedure would be would be left to him and this [her offer of a contract] was a separate situation”. As it transpired, nothing came of her offer, which was rejected by Mr Goodman. Mrs Brooks confirmed to the jury that she later heard that Mr Goodman’s employment tribunal claim had settled, but she was not involved in that settlement; she was not even informed of the settlement figure at that time.

10.29 The fact that Mrs Brooks was not even informed of the figure at which Mr Goodman’s employment tribunal claim had settled is of particular significance given the full context of her words, “I was not involved in the settlement with Clive Goodman”. The question, posed in Mr Whittingdale’s letter to Mrs Brooks dated 16 August 2011, which Mrs Brooks was answering in September 2011, was:

“There is an obvious discrepancy between your statement that Mr Goodman’s settlement was “some way below the then £60,600 limit on such awards” and the amounts detailed in Mr Murdoch’s written evidence. I would be grateful if you could account for this discrepancy.”

10.30 It was in answer to this question that Mrs Brooks wrote – on 12 September 2011:

“In relation to your letter of 16 August 2011, I was not involved in the settlement with Clive Goodman and the information provided in the letter of 4 November 2009 was provided to me by Jon Chapman who has given evidence to you. … I am unable to provide any further assistance as to any discrepancy…”

10.31 What is more, when Mrs Brooks wrote her letter of 12 September 2011, she had resigned and was neither employed by nor speaking for NI. If there had been any inaccuracies in her letter (which, we emphasise, there was not) it could not therefore form the basis of a finding that NI misled the CMSSC.

11 Question 3

“Please provide a copy of the judgment of Vos J in the case of Sienna Miller v News Group Newspapers referred to by Rupert Murdoch in his witness statement at paragraph 214 onwards. Does your client wish to make any statement or comment upon Vos J’s reported finding that News International had a “pre-conceived plan to hide emails”?”

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Response 11.1 A copy of the relevant decision of Mr Justice Vos is attached as Appendix 4.

11.2 This question asks whether the company wishes to comment on the remark made by Mr Justice Vos in the litigation brought by Sienna Miller that there was a “pre-conceived plan to hide emails”. The question fails accurately to quote what Mr Justice Vos said: he referred to a “plan to delete emails”, which is very different from a “plan to hide emails”. It ignores the fact that Mr Justice Vos did not hear any evidence as to the reasons for deletion and so made no concluded finding. And it ignores the fact that detailed evidence was given at the criminal trial of Mrs Brooks and Mr Kuttner explaining that the deletion of emails was because of an antiquated and badly managed IT system. The question from the Committee is, therefore, a serious misrepresentation of the facts.

11.3 The phrase appeared in paragraph 9 of the Judgment in the following context:

“I have been shown a number of emails which are confidential, and therefore I will not read them out, but suffice it to say that they show a rather startling approach to the email record of NGN and they show, because this much has been said in open court, that only three days after the solicitors for Sienna Miller had written their letter before action, asking specifically that NGN should retain any emails concerned with the claim in relation to phone hacking, what happened was that a previously conceived plan to delete emails was put into effect at the behest of senior management.”

11.4 There was no finding of fact by Mr Justice Vos as to a plan to delete emails for any improper purpose nor was this a point which was litigated with the benefit of full evidence for each party. Rather, the point arose in an application for specific discovery and reflected the Judge’s interpretation of a limited number of documents produced by counsel for the Claimants for the purposes of submissions in the group action.

11.5 The issue as to the deletion of emails featured prominently in the trial of Mrs Brooks and Mr Kuttner before Saunders J, which commenced in October 2013, by which date further investigation had been carried out by the police regarding the deletion of emails at NI.

11.6 In the course of the criminal proceedings, the CPS and MPS accepted that the IT systems and email storage systems at NI were out of date and that there was good reason to update and modernise them. The policy under which the systems was updated, expressly ensured that all material which might be relevant to current or pending litigation was retained and steps were taken to ensure that this was the case. During the criminal trial, the issue of “email deletion” was ultimately uncontroversial and the evidence was presented to the jury by way of “Agreed Facts” – that is, written admissions which both the prosecution and defence agreed were true.

11.7 Paul Cheesebrough, who became Chief Information Officer at NI and its subsidiaries on 1 September 2010, gave evidence to the MPS that the company’s email archive platform was unstable, resulting in loss of data and significant downtime. A project – the “email stabilisation project” – ran from November 2009 through 2010 to deal with these issues, but with little success. At that point it became clear that the existing email archive system was at the end of its life and that the policy relating to the retention of data was inconsistent and, in some places, non-existent. Mr Cheesebrough raised his concerns with the NI Commercial Executive in late September 2010. He recommended replacing the existing system with a more robust system as part of a larger office move. That decision was made on 8 October 2010.

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11.8 Before January 2005, NI had no email archive system. Email data was stored locally by each user, each of whom decided which of his or her email records to retain and which to delete. Under the original archiving system introduced in 2005, emails were set to archive after 14 days. An email message deleted by an individual within 14 days would not have been archived. Any user was permitted to opt out of archiving and manage their email retention locally instead.

11.9 Between 11 December 2007 and 16 May 2010, a total of 9,244,111 emails were “purged” from the archive. These “purge” events were linked to scheduled maintenance tasks that occurred routinely. In August 2010, a “purge” task was carried out within NI’s email archive, which resulted in the deletion of 1,119,478 emails. This purge was necessitated by a disk failure, which had corrupted data.

11.10 In addition to the above losses of data, in September 2010, NI instructed an IT firm, Capax, (contracted in January 2010 to support NI in managing its email archive system) to purge emails dated before 2005. As a result, on 30 September 2010, 4,480,902 emails were deleted from NI’s email archive system. The background to that deletion appears to relate to the instability of the systems and what was described in an email dated 27 August 2010 from Mr Morris to Ronan Curran at Capax as an “urgent need to have a working EAS environment”. There is nothing sinister about the deletion of these emails, which was undertaken in order to enhance the stability of the email system.

11.11 In summing up the evidence to the jury at the first trial which took place before Saunders J between October 2013 and June 2014, he stated (on 4 June 2014):

“….there is a considerable amount of documentation on which both sides rely on to assist their case. Despite the existence of so many e mails you need to be aware that a very large number of e mails sent and received by people working at the News of the World during the period covered by the Indictment are no longer in existence. Millions of them are no longer available. Prior to 2005 there was no archiving facility at the News of the World. So, whether or not e mails still exist depends on whether the individual employee chose to delete them or not. There were various purges carried out for perfectly good reasons which wiped out large numbers of e mails. We know that the purge in 2010 resulted in the permanent deletion of 3 million e mails, for example. It may be that there were e mails which are no longer in existence which if they had been might have opened up other lines of inquiry which could have been pursued by the defence…..”28

11.12 There is therefore no basis for a conclusion that any individual (let alone one of sufficient seniority that their knowledge or actions should be attributed to the company) employed by NI had a plan to “hide” emails.

12 Question 4

“On p.304, paragraph 3.37 of volume 1 of his Report, Lord Justice Leveson quotes from a letter dated 14 September 2006 given by Burton Copeland to the Police:

a. Who instructed Burton Copeland to “produce documentation or other material in the possession of an individual” and not more broadly?

b. Was your client aware at or around the time, that the scope of the documentation etc. provided did not extend to other journalists, the News of the World or beyond?”

28 Official Transcript Merrill Corporation, page 34, 4 June 2014.

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Response 12.1 This question focuses on a letter dated 14 September 2006 from Burton Copeland (“BCL”) to the MPS, the content of which has evidently been misconstrued by the Committee.

12.2 If the implication of the Committee’s question is that BCL undertook an investigation into wrongdoing at the News of the World, that is incorrect. BCL was not retained to conduct any form of internal investigation. Insofar as the Committee may have been influenced by the evidence given to the CMSSC by Mr Coulson on 21 July 2009, his evidence on the point is open to misinterpretation.29 There was no “investigation” as the evidence referred to below establishes. Mr Coulson was giving evidence to the CMSSC almost three years after the event and can only have been referring to the assistance that BCL was instructed to provide to the MPS in response to their requests for specific documents.

12.3 The contemporaneous correspondence shows that BCL was engaged to assist NI to respond to the MPS investigation by assisting with the production of specific documents. The letter of 31 August 2006 made this clear as the following extract shows: “On behalf of my clients, News Group Newspapers Ltd, I would wish to make it plain that in connection with the enquiries that you are presently conducting and which are referred to in the Application under…(PACE Application), a copy of which was enclosed with your fax transmission, that my clients intend to provide such material as you or your colleagues might reasonably require from them in connection with your enquiries…..I look forward to hearing from you once you have had the opportunity of considering the material.” Mr Justin Walford (a member of the company’s in house legal team) contacted BCL on 16 August 2006 in this context and for that purpose.

12.4 Mr Coulson instructed that BCL be appointed and that Mr Crone should deal with them on a day to day basis.

12.5 The CMSSC received written explanations from both BCL and the MSC in 2011 regarding the scope of BCL’s role.30 Copies of those letters are included in Appendix 5.

12.6 Question 4(a) in the Committee’s letter of 9 March 2016 appears to be based on a misunderstanding of the point being made by BCL in their letter of 14 September 2006. The relevant extract reads as follows:

“Newsgroup Newspapers are anxious to provide all material reasonably required in respect of your investigation into voicemail interception offences. We stress, however, that the procedure under Part 2 of the 1984 Act is a procedure designed to produce documentation or other material in the possession of an individual. It is not a procedure designed to elicit answers other than those contained within such material.”

12.7 The reference to the 1984 Act is to the procedure by which the police may compel the production of certain material – “the production order procedure”.

12.8 On 31 August 2006, DI Maberly attended the offices of BCL and made a number of requests for information which were also incorporated in a draft Production Order Request

29 Q1719 Tom Watson: When you found out about the arrests. Presumably you commissioned an inquiry? Mr Coulson: Yes. Obviously we wanted to know internally very quickly what the hell had gone on. Then I brought in Burton Copeland, an independent firm of solicitors to carry out an investigation. We opened up the files as much as we could. There was nothing that they asked for that they were not given. 30 The Report, Ev 228.

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supplied by the MPS. The point being made by BCL in the passage cited from the letter of the 14 September 2006 is not that BCL had been instructed by NI only to produce documentation or material in the possession of an individual, but rather that that was the most that the MPS would be able to obtain if they were to rely on the 1984 Act. This was not a restriction placed on them by News UK but one contained in the Act, which the correspondence made clear. In the event, NGN did not insist that the MPS apply for a production order: it provided material voluntarily. BCL also made it clear that if there were further questions they would respond to them and expressly invited the MPS to contact BCL for the purpose of answering any specific requests for information.

12.9 Question 4(b) appears to proceed on a misunderstanding of the relevant extract from Lord Justice Leveson’s Report in asking whether NGN was aware at or around the time of the BCL letter in September 2006 that the scope of the documentation provided did not extend to other journalists, the News of the World or beyond. Paragraph 2.68 of Lord Justice Leveson’s Report at page 290 expressly states that: “….NI instructed BCL…..to respond on their behalf to any enquiries or requests from the police…”.

12.10 In fact, paragraph 3.33 of Lord Justice Leveson’s Report sets out the relevant part of the draft production order (which was never in fact obtained because of the voluntary production). It read:

“……all paid cheques, credit/debit slips, mandates, statements of accounts, inter- account and telegraphic transfers, any other vouchers in relation to the following financial accounts. Account numbers… sort code … or payment to any other bank accounts held in the name of Glenn Mulcaire, Nine Consultancy Ltd or Nine Consultancy UK Ltd and any cash payments made by or on behalf of News International or Newsgroup Newspaper to Glenn Mulcaire from 1 January 2005 present [sic]”.

12.11 In response to this request, Lord Justice Leveson noted that the company, through BCL, produced:

12.11.1 A schedule created from the company’s records of all payments to the accounts referred to in the draft production order.

12.11.2 The appropriate BACS Telecom acceptance advice relating to payments to be included in the payment schedule.

12.11.3 The redacted payment schedule highlighting each payment to Nine Consultancy Limited.

12.11.4 The appropriate copy invoice in respect of each payment included in the schedule referred to in paragraph 12.11.1 above.

12.12 Thus, the focus of the MPS’s request and the corresponding production was Mr Mulcaire and the companies associated with him. The question of any broader production did not arise other than in the context of BCL’s offer on behalf of NI to assist the MPS in relation to any specific points or matters which the MPS might request assistance in relation to.

13 Question 5

“In volume 1, of Lord Justice Leveson’s Report, at Part E, paragraphs 2.60 and 6.43, he discusses the approach of News International to the Police searches. Is there anything that your client wishes to explain, or to change, add or amend in the evidence given orally

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and in writing to the Culture Media and Sport Committee in 2009 and 2011, and in particular, its evidence as to the scope, extent and handling of the investigation? Your client’s attention is drawn, in particular to:

a. 2007 – Questions to the then Chief Executive, Les Hinton – Qq 91 and 95”

Response 13.1 Question 5 focuses on paragraphs 2.60 and 6.43 of Chapter 4, Part E, of Lord Justice Leveson’s Report which comments on NI’s response to the police investigation in 2006 and the approach of BCL. The company is asked whether it wishes to supplement the evidence it gave to the CMSSC as to the scope, extent and handling of the investigation, in particular drawing attention to Questions 91 and 95 addressed to Mr Hinton. Whereas paragraph 6.43 comments on the MPS searches at Wapping and BCL’s approach to the police investigation, the questions to Mr Hinton are directed at the thoroughness of the company’s investigation, neither of which relate to NI’s attitude towards the police investigation. Consequently, the premise of the Committee’s question is unclear.

13.2 As is noted above, BCL was not engaged to do an internal investigation for NGN. BCL was engaged to assist the company in responding to the requests made of it by the MPS. The scope of the requests made of the company by the MPS was a matter for the MPS. If the MPS had considered that the production being offered by the company was deficient, then it had compulsory powers which it could have used. Paragraph 2.60 of the Report, which notes DCS Surtees’ comments about his experience of the search of NI’s premises, should be seen in this context.

13.3 NI does not accept that the MPS investigation was in any sense “thwarted”. That is not a fair reflection of the process by which, ultimately, a huge amount of material (much of it concerned with news and editorial information) was provided voluntarily by the company and by the Management and Standards Committee to the MPS without the MPS having to resort to the exercise of compulsory powers. During the course of the ensuing MPS investigation into a number of individuals, the MPS served on News UK a number of Requests by way of the production order process. News UK co-operated with the requests, supplying material voluntarily. In a limited number of instances News UK resisted the requests for valid reasons and in every such instance the position adopted by News UK was either not challenged by the police or (on the one occasion when an application was made to the Court) News UK’s approach was approved by the Court.

13.4 In any event, Mr Hinton’s evidence in 2007 was not the subject of criticism by the CMSSC, and is therefore not within the scope of the Committee’s inquiry.

14 Question 6

“In relation to the Witness Statement of Colin Myler to the Police dated 21 December 2011, and the reference to his meetings and conversations with Rebekah Brooks, then Chief Executive, is there anything that your client wishes to explain, add or amend in the evidence given orally and in writing to the Culture Media and Sport Committee in 2009 and 2011, and in particular, evidence provided to that Committee orally and in writing after the Myler/Crone/Thurlbeck meeting took place?”

Response 14.1 This question focuses on Mr Myler’s Witness Statement dated 21 December 2011 and given to the police, though never served nor relied upon in any prosecution. On 5 May

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2011 and 21 July 2009, when Mr Myler gave oral evidence to the CMSSC, he did not give any evidence in relation to the matters which are the subject of this question. The contents of his witness statement to the police are surprising in the light of the evidence that he provided to the CMSSC on 21 July 2009 at Ev 314, which was given in the presence of Mr Crone, who is also alleged in Mr Myler’s statement to have been made aware of these matters. This is particularly so in the context of the passage on page 3 of 4 of Mr Myler’s statement “……that if I were asked about my knowledge, I would not lie…”. It would be a serious misjudgement for the Committee to rely upon the contents of this statement having regard to the fact that it is likely that the MPS and the CPS had good reason not to rely upon its contents, notwithstanding that on its face it was capable of providing evidence against Mrs Brooks and Mr Kuttner at their trial, which was not to commence until October 2013. One good reason would be an appreciation of the evidence that Mr Myler had given to the CMSSC in 2011. In the event, the statement has never been tested in evidence. The Committee is reminded that Mr Crone has not been prosecuted for any offence and that Mr Kuttner was acquitted.

14.2 In his Statement, Mr Myler relates the circumstances of his learning, in 2009, that a journalist had admitted to having hacked the mobile telephone voicemails of a prominent politician some years previously. It further details Mr Myler’s reactions on learning that information.

14.3 Since these are not events explored by the CMSSC and in any event, this was not evidence given on behalf of NI, the CMSSC cannot have been misled by NI in relation to the matters covered in Mr Myler’s Witness Statement.

15 Question 7

“Please consider the Record of Attendance for a meeting on 20.01.2010; an email from Frederic Michel to Rebekah Brooks of 03.02.2010; an email from Rebekah Brooks to Martin Ivens; and an email from Rebekah Brooks to Matthew Anderson of 13.12.2010. There are a number of references to the Select Committee throughout the documents. In addition, the Michel email refers to an admission by Mulcaire’s barrister, and the Anderson email refers to months spent “moving from Rogue Reporter to Zero Tolerance”.

Does your client wish to make a comment upon those references, especially in light of the CMS Chapter 8 conclusion that News International corporately misled the Committee about “the true nature and extent of the internal investigations they professed to have carried out in relation to phone hacking; by making statements they would have known were not fully truthful; and by failing to disclose documents which would have helped expose the truth”?”

Response 15.1 This question offers NI the opportunity to comment on certain references to the CMSSC in underlying documents and the CMSSC’s conclusion that it was misled by NI as to the nature and extent of the internal investigations carried out by the company. The CMSSC also criticised the company for making statements which were not fully truthful and failing to disclose documents which would have helped to expose the truth.

15.2 These criticisms are unfounded and unfair. They have already been substantially addressed by the answers given above.

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15.3 As to the specific documents to which the Committee has referred, none of them – either individually or collectively – provide any foundation for a conclusion that the company was intentionally trying to prevent relevant matters being investigated and/or disclosed:

15.3.1 The attendance note of 20 January 2010 was compiled by Farrer & Co and provided voluntarily by NGN (even though it could have declined to provide it on the basis that it is privileged). The advice that is recorded that it would be preferable for Mrs Brooks to give written answers to the CMSSC rather than attending in person is no more than a statement of the advice that lawyers might give to potential witnesses.

15.3.2 When Mrs Brooks wrote the email to Mr Martin Ivens dated 20 February 2010 she was doing no more than pointing out the obvious: it would be unhelpful were there to be a further claim from Mr Max Clifford (which was related to a story about the MMR vaccine and therefore entirely unrelated) at a time when the company was attempting to settle an earlier claim brought by him and the CMSSC was due to publish its report.

15.3.3 The email from Mr Frederic Michel to Mrs Brooks dated 3 February 2010 simply reports what Mr Mulcaire’s barrister had said publicly in open Court and gives Mr Michel’s reflection on the consequences of an admission by Mr Mulcaire.

15.3.4 In the email from Mrs Brooks to Mr Matthew Anderson (dated 16 December 2010 rather than 13 December as per the Committee’s letter) she asks whether “Ian written in the corner is evidence that it is IE and that he is guilty.” Mr Anderson responds that he does not believe that Mr Edmondson is guilty but recognises that the allegation will be made. This issue was being discussed in the context of the suspension of Mr Edmondson, which happened four days after this email exchange.

15.3.5 The Committee asks about the change from “Rogue Reporter” to “Zero Tolerance” referred to in some of the documents. There is nothing sinister in this. For the reasons already explained, it became clear to the company, as more information emerged over time, that the instances of voicemail interception, or knowledge of them, were not as confined as had once been believed. The company’s reaction to the underlying events adapted accordingly.

16 Question 8

“In its judgment in the matter of Chapman and Abramson, the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal refers at paragraph 34.7 to an email dated 3 October 2010 from Jon Chapman. The SDT describes Mr Chapman as being “absolutely categorical in his advice that the 2007 email review was of no assistance”. Please provide us with an unredacted copy of that email.”

Response 16.1 This question relates to the email dated 3 October 2010 from Mr Chapman, referred to in the decision of the SDT. That email is privileged and was provided to the SDT in circumstances where it was entitled to see privileged documents given its role and powers. It is referred to in paragraph 34.7 of the Decision of the Tribunal:

“The First Respondent told the Tribunal that if he had been asked to perform a wider review into alleged illegal activities he would have conducted it in an entirely

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different way to the limited review that he did in connection with the specific allegations that had been made by CG, and the Tribunal accepted this. In particular, the Tribunal found an email dated 3 October 2010 to be of particular significance for a number of reasons. It was regrettable that this email was only disclosed by the Applicant after the Tribunal’s Order on 29 July 2014 and did not form part of the documents attached to the Rule 5 Statement. To the Tribunal’s mind it undermined the suggestion that the First Respondent was part of any form of cover-up or that there was some after-the-event reconstruction. The email was written in October 2010 before the Select Committee hearing at which evidence was given by senior executives in July 2011 and before the Leveson Inquiry in December 2011. The fact that the recipients of the email included senior management figures may have been expected to put pressure on the First Respondent, but he was absolutely categorical in his advice that the 2007 email review was of no assistance. …”

16.2 The reference to the email in the Tribunal’s Decision is selective and was made in the course of a proceeding that was not considering the thoroughness of the investigations in 2007 but rather Mr Chapman’s role in connection with them. The findings of the Tribunal are entirely supportive of the integrity of Mr Chapman in relation to this aspect. Any further investigation of these facts is also beyond the remit of this Committee. The Committee’s question has taken a phrase referred to in the Decision out of context, which could be addressed, but only by a waiver of privilege, which is unfair. The privilege is maintained and a copy is therefore not provided.

16.3 In any event, the Tribunal found that this email was relevant to its conclusion that there had been no “cover up”.

17 Question 9

“In a letter from the Chair of CMS to Rebekah Wade on 9 July 2009 (PS 99), the Chair wrote to ask Ms Wade to submit evidence on the truth of the allegations that “illegal phone tapping was in fact a widespread practice, and that News International has settled cases amounting to £1m to prevent this from becoming public knowledge.” In her response, Ms Wade stated that Mr Myler was the appropriate witness “to refute allegations that illegal phone tapping was a widespread practice at the paper.” She suggested that the Guardian coverage had “substantially and likely deliberately misled the British public”. In light of the information within the enclosed documents, is there any comment that your client wishes to make on this letter and response?”

Response 17.1 The evidence provided by Mrs Brooks in 2009 was not the subject of criticism by the CMSSC and is therefore beyond the remit of the Committee.

17.2 Mrs Brooks’ letter did suggest that the Guardian coverage had been misleading; this reflected Mrs Brooks’ genuinely held views in light of what she then knew and as made clear by her when she gave evidence to the CMSSC on 19 July 2011 and later reflected in the outcome of her eight month criminal trial.

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18 Requests for Information contained in the letter of 23 December 2014

19 Question 1

“In 2011 you told the Culture, Media and Sport Committee (Ev 263, your letter dated 1 December 2011), that you were not in a position to tell the Committee who had commissioned the surveillance undertaken by Derek Webb of Mr Tom Watson MP between 28 September and 2 October 2009. For ease of reference, the relevant part of your written evidence states:

Finally, you have asked about the surveillance of members of the Committee and their friends and family. The MSC is currently looking into this matter and its enquiries are not yet complete. However, the MSC can confirm that there is information that Mr Watson was under surveillance by Mr Derek Webb between 28 September 2009 and 2 October 2009. The MSC’s present understanding is that three employees were involved in commissioning this surveillance. We do not think it appropriate to name the individuals involved given the ongoing police investigations.

a. Please can you now name the three employees, or any employees, who commissioned the surveillance of Mr Tom Watson MP, or any other Culture Media and Sport Committee Members?”

Response 19.1 During the week of 21 November 2011 a review of 7,500 emails (identified by a “key word” search) was carried out to review the matter raised by the CMSSC. That work showed that only one member of the CMSSC, Mr Tom Watson MP, was the subject of investigation by employees of NGN.

19.2 The NGN employees who were involved were Mr James Mellor, Mr Mazher Mahmood and Mr Edmondson. The inquiries were undertaken by Mr Derek Webb and not by any NGN employee themselves. The matter which was investigated was not relevant to Mr Watson’s role on the CMSSC or duties as an MP. The investigation was undertaken in September 2009.

20 Question 2

“The Committee is also interested in the settlements agreed with Mr Mulcaire and Mr Goodman. Please provide information on:

a. Whether the figures for damages and costs in the cases of Mr Goodman and Mr Mulcaire were agreed at the same time, and with both amounts included in the each of the written settlement agreements?

b. Whether Mr Les Hinton authorised both damages and costs elements of the final full settlement payments?

c. If known, did Mr Hinton authorise each element separately, or as one figure inclusive of costs?”

Response 20.1 The Compromise Agreements for both Mr Goodman and Mr Mulcaire each contain two separate figures, one for termination of employment and the other for reasonable legal expenses.

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20.2 After receiving advice from counsel, Mr Hinton authorised the settlements with Mr Goodman and Mr Mulcaire. We refer the Committee to the answer provided under the heading “Question 3” in the letter from Mrs Brooks to the CMSSC dated 4 November 2009 in which she set out details of the settlement provided to her by Mr Chapman.31

20.3 News UK is not able to provide any further information in respect of the answer to ‘c.’

21 Question 3

“In relation to the claim brought by Gordon Taylor, who signed the statement of truth on the Defence to this claim, as originally filed, and on what date was it first filed with the Court?”

Response 21.1 The statement of truth contained in NGN’s defence in the Mr Taylor claim was signed by Joanna May Workman of Farrer & Co, Solicitors, on 8 June 2007. The defence was filed on the same date.

21.2 NGN later amended its defence. Julian Pike of Farrer & Co, Solicitors, signed the statement of truth on 13 June 2008.

22 Question 4

“Which individual instructed Burton Copeland in August 2006?”

Response 22.1 Mr Walford.

23 Question 5

“Was Clive Goodman’s appeal against dismissal letter dated 2 March 2007 sent by post or email or both?”

Response 23.1 By First Class post, addressed to Mr Kuttner at the offices of the newspaper at Virginia Street London and franked by the Royal Mail on 2 March 2007.

31 Ev. 231 provides: “Les Hinton, the Executive Chairman of News International Limited and a director of News Group Newspapers Limited, authorised the settlement with, and payment to, Clive Goodman, following discussions with Jon Chapman and Daniel Cloke. He also authorised the settlement with, and payment to, Glen Mulcaire, following discussions with Jon Chapman …”.

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Appendix 1

Examples of the CMSSC’s failure to appreciate or apply corporate attribution principles

1. The first elements of confusion in relation to the question of whether evidence was being presented to the CMSSC on behalf of NI and with its authority or, alternatively, by persons acting at the invitation of the CMSSC but without the authority of the company to give evidence on its behalf, appear in the early stages of the Report. At chapter 2, paragraph 21 the Eleventh Report reads as follows:

“21. In its 2010 Report, Press standards, privacy and libel, the Committee nonetheless was “struck by the collective amnesia afflicting witnesses from the News of the World”.16 During the inquiry which led to the production of that Report, the forgetfulness of News International reached new levels on 15 September 2009, when Les Hinton, formerly Chief Executive of News International, appeared before the Committee and stated that he did not know, could not recall, did not remember or was not familiar with the events under scrutiny a total of 72 times.”

2. Mr Hinton left NI on 7 December 2007 and became Chief Executive of Dow Jones. When he gave evidence in 2009, he did not hold the necessary authority, or any authority, to present evidence on behalf of NI / News UK nor did he claim to do so. Nonetheless, the CMSSC chose to attribute any perceived deficiencies in Mr Hinton’s recollection of events to NI, as the above extract from the Report clearly shows.

3. Despite these obvious facts the CMSSC reached conclusions in relation to the evidence of Mr Hinton which it was prepared to attribute to NI in their capacity as Mr Hinton’s former employers. At paragraphs 84 and 85 of the Report the Committee reached the following conclusions in relation to NI in the context of the settlement of Mr Goodman’s claim:

“84. The total amount paid to Clive Goodman is extraordinary when one considers that he had been convicted of a criminal offence and that his actions had helped stain the reputation of the company. The double payment of a year’s salary was, by any standards, ‘over-generous’ and it is impossible, therefore, not to question the company’s motives. The pay-offs to a convicted criminal hardly reflect well on Les Hinton, who had authority over both payments. When questioned about them in 2009 he was startlingly vague and— inexcusably—sought to portray his role as a passive one, simply following the advice given to him by his subordinates. The evidence we took in 2011 suggests that he not only authorised the payments, but took the decision to make them in the first place. Furthermore, he was responsible for the double payment of Clive Goodman’s notice and, his ‘selective amnesia’ notwithstanding, he would have been perfectly well aware of what he had done. We consider, therefore, that Les Hinton misled the Committee in 2009 regarding the extent of the pay-off to Clive Goodman and his own role in making it happen.

85. The testimony regarding the payments to Clive Goodman is not the only evidence from Les Hinton which we find unsatisfactory. He first appeared before the Committee on 6 March 2007, precisely four days after Clive Goodman’s letter alleging widespread involvement in phone hacking, which was copied to him. Whether or not Les Hinton had seen this letter before his appearance in 2007, he certainly had by the time he did so on 15 September 2009 when he said: ‘There was never firm evidence provided or suspicion provided that I am aware of that implicated anybody else other than Clive within the staff of the News of the World. It just did not happen’. This was not true. Clive Goodman had

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certainly provided ‘suspicion’ of wider involvement, but Les Hinton failed to mention it to the Committee. At no stage did Les Hinton seek to correct the record, even when invited by the Committee to do so. We consider, therefore, that Les Hinton was complicit in the cover- up at News International, which included making misleading statements and giving a misleading picture to this Committee.”

4. The CMSSC consistently failed to grasp, from the outset, the fundamental principle that a corporate body can neither give evidence nor can it mislead other than through the actions of individuals possessing the necessary authority. Only individuals possessed of the necessary authority and acting as the persona or alter ego of a corporate body can give misleading evidence on behalf of a corporate body and thereby commit an act by way of contempt for which the corporate body may also be responsible, depending always upon the specific circumstances. None of the individuals criticised by the Committee were authorised to give evidence on behalf of NI, either in their capacity as employee or as former employees. The Committee’s Report included the following further findings which demonstrate [emphasis added] the inability of the Committee to grasp this concept:

“91. We accept that, however distasteful it may seem, there was nothing inherently sinister about News International paying Clive Goodman’s legal fees in respect of the criminal charges he faced. Now that we are certain that he authorised the payment, however, we are distinctly unimpressed by Les Hinton’s 2009 assertion that he did not know whether or not the company had paid those fees. Declarations of ignorance or amnesia do not assist News International in its bid to convince the Committee, and the wider public, that it had nothing to hide. If it was legitimate to have paid Clive Goodman’s legal fees, the company would have been better advised to admit to having done so. Again, we consider that Les Hinton’s unwillingness to be explicit over the payment of legal fees was a deliberate effort to mislead the Committee over News International’s payments to Clive Goodman after he was charged and convicted.”

5. This error was to be repeated time and again throughout the Committee’s Report in relation to the facts. The CMSSC consistently failed to grasp, from the outset, the fundamental principle that a corporate body can neither give evidence nor can it mislead other than through the actions of individuals possessing the necessary authority. Only individuals possessed of the necessary authority and acting as the persona or alter ego of a corporate body can give misleading evidence on behalf of a corporate body and thereby commit an act by way of contempt for which the corporate body may also be responsible, depending always upon the specific circumstances. Paragraph 2 of the Introduction to the Report contains the following words, which demonstrate that, in referring to the investigation conducted by the CMSSC in the session 2009 – 2010, the CMSSC simply failed to grasp this vital distinction:

“The Committee made it clear that it regarded some of the contentions made by witnesses as straining credulity but, faced with a repeated insistence that wrongdoing was not widespread, and the unwillingness of police and prosecutors to investigate further, it was not possible to conclude definitively that we had knowingly been given evidence which was deliberately misleading or false, either by individuals or by News International itself.”

6. This fundamental error had been repeated throughout the Report which, according to the letter of the 23 March 2016 from the Committee of Privileges, forms the “suggested basis of responsibility” of NI.

7. At paragraph 82 of the Report the following findings were expressed by the CMSSC:

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“82. In subsequent written evidence, nonetheless, Colin Myler backtracked as to his lack of knowledge. In a letter dated 4 August 2009, he wrote: ‘I and Tom Crone were broadly aware of the claims and the fact that they were settled, but not of the terms of the settlement.’ This was clearly an attempt to salvage something of the united front which had cracked in oral evidence—and typifies the initial, closing ranks approach of the News of the World and News International in dealing with questions about phone-hacking affair and its aftermath.”

8. Mr Myler held the position of editor of the News of the World until the closure of that publication on 10 July 2011. In his capacity as editor of the newspaper he had no authority to give evidence on behalf of the corporate bodies known as NGN or NI. He did not suggest that he had such authority. The CPS decision not to prosecute NGN based on the criminal acts of Mr Coulson was predicated on the conclusion that an Editor within NGN did not act as the controlling mind and will of the corporate body.

9. At paragraph 120 of the Report the CMSSC expressed its findings as follows:

“120. In 2009, a number of senior executives from News International lined up to tell the Committee that, as far as they were concerned, Clive Goodman had been a single ‘rogue reporter’, entirely responsible for phone-hacking at the News of the World. Les Hinton, former Executive Chairman of News International, said that “there was never any evidence delivered to me that suggested that the conduct of Clive Goodman spread beyond him”. Andy Coulson, former Editor of the News of the World, said that “if a rogue reporter decides to behave in that fashion I am not sure that there is an awful lot more I could have done”. His successor Colin Myler, the newspaper’s editorial lawyer Tom Crone and its former managing editor Stuart Kuttner maintained the same line—which was also repeated in evidence given to the Press Complaints Commission by Colin Myler and in statements to the public at large.”

10. On 7 December 2007 Mr Hinton resigned from his position as Chief Executive of NI and could not conceivably be described as a senior executive “from News International” at the stage at which he gave evidence to the CMSSC in 2009 or thereafter. Mr Kuttner resigned in July 2009. Mr Crone resigned in August 2011 and gave evidence to the CMSSC again in September of that year. Mr Myler had left the News of the World in July 2011. None of those witnesses had the necessary authority to give evidence to the CMSSC on behalf of their former employer nor was it suggested at any stage that they had done so. Save in the case of Mr Hinton, their former positions within the company would not have invested them with the necessary authority to do so before their resignations, whether expressly or by implication or otherwise, and in any event they certainly did not have any such authority after their resignations. The finding, expressed at paragraph 130 of the Report, that “Both Tom Crone and Colin Myler deliberately avoided disclosing crucial information to the Committee, and when asked to do so, answered questions falsely”, cannot therefore, under any circumstances, whether of fact or of law, be attributed to NI. Further, every one of these witnesses was either under investigation or subject to public scrutiny of their actions and may have had reasons of their own for any perceived unwillingness to answer questions or provide inaccurate information in reply to the Committee’s questions both in 2009 and in 2011.

11. The CMSSC continued its flawed approach at paragraph 133 of the Report:

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“133. There is a marked difference between the way that the significance of the ‘for Neville’ e-mail was presented to the Committee by witnesses from News International, both in 2009 and 2011, and the way that it was discussed within the company.”

12. The CMSSC again failed to apply conventional principles to its criticisms of NI in terms of the evidence that had been given to successive Committees.

13. At paragraph 216 the CMSSC’s findings failed to distinguish between, on the one hand, evidence given by former and/or then current employees and executives who did not enjoy any authority to present evidence on behalf of NI, and who had been the subject of specific criticism that they had given misleading evidence, and on the other hand, the evidence of Mr James Murdoch and Mr Keith Rupert Murdoch (who did not present evidence on behalf of NI), neither of whom had been the subject of a finding by the CMSSC that they had misled Parliament.

“216. The history of the News of the World at hearings of the Committee is a long one, characterised by “collective amnesia” and a reluctance fully and fairly to provide the Committee with the information it sought. News International has repeatedly stone- walled, obfuscated and misled and only come clean, reluctantly, when no other course of action was sensible and when its wider commercial interests were threatened. In Rupert Murdoch's own words to the Leveson inquiry, News Corporation in the UK mounted a cover-up.”

14. Chapter 8 of the Report summarised the CMSSC’s conclusions. The Committee was under a clear duty, having regard to the fact that it proposed to table a motion inviting the House of Commons to endorse its conclusions “about misleading evidence”, to ensure that its conclusions were accurately expressed and had been reached after the proper application of established legal principles. Paragraph 275 of the Report drew the following conclusions in four “bullet points”, the last of which betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the ‘identification principle’ in the context of corporate liability and serves to fatally undermine the accuracy of the conclusions.

• “Les Hinton misled the Committee in 2009 in not telling the truth about payments to Clive Goodman and his role in authorising them, including the payment of his legal fee. He also misled the Committee about the extent of his knowledge of allegations that phone-hacking extended beyond Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire to others at the News of the World (see paragraphs 84, 85 and 91). • Tom Crone misled the Committee in 2009 by giving a counter-impression of the significance of confidentiality in the Gordon Taylor settlement (see paragraph 118) and sought to mislead the Committee about the commissioning of surveillance. • Tom Crone and Colin Myler misled the Committee by answering questions falsely about their knowledge of evidence that other News of the World employees had been involved in phone-hacking and other wrongdoing (see paragraphs 130 and 140). • Corporately, the News of the World and News International misled the Committee about the true nature and extent of the internal investigations they professed to have carried out in relation to phone hacking; by making statements they would have known were not fully truthful; and by failing to disclose documents which would have helped expose the truth. Their instinct throughout, until it was too late, was to cover up rather than seek out wrongdoing and discipline the perpetrators, as they also professed they would do after the criminal convictions. In failing to investigate properly, and by ignoring evidence of widespread wrongdoing, News International and its parent News Corporation exhibited wilful blindness, for which the companies’ directors—including Rupert Murdoch and James

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Murdoch—should ultimately be prepared to take responsibility (see paragraphs 32, 33, 60, 62, 132 and 141).”

15. Paragraph 276 reads as follows:

“276. The effect of these actions and omissions is that the Committee’s Report to the House in February 2010 on Press standards, privacy and libel was not based on fully accurate evidence. False evidence, indeed, prevented the Committee from exposing the true extent of phone-hacking.”

16. This fundamental misunderstanding is further demonstrated by the fact that a detailed analysis of the contents of the Report fails to produce any clear finding that any individual, possessed of the necessary authority to present evidence to the CMSSC on behalf of News International, and thereby acting as the persona or alter ego of the company, was responsible for giving any evidence to the CMSSC or its predecessor which was deliberately and intentionally misleading. The only discernible adverse findings made against senior executives of News International and News Corporation, which relate to Mr James Murdoch and Mr Keith Rupert Murdoch, do not bear upon the question of whether or not Parliament was misled. On the contrary, there has been no finding that either of them misled the CMSSC. Arguably, the findings that have been made in relation to each of them exceed that Committee’s authority and are certainly not relevant to the investigation currently vested by Parliament in the Committee of Privileges.

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Appendix 2

Mr Watson’s public statements regarding News International and the senior executives of NI and News Corp prior to 30 April 2012

1. Mr Watson operated his own website entitled ‘Tom Watson MP.’ The following material was posted on the site prior to the CMSSC’s resolution of the 30 April 2012 that the Report be the Eleventh Report of the CMSSC to The House.

April 16, 2012 — , Murdoch Book

Dial ‘M’ for Murdoch – News Corporation and the corruption of Britain

Very excited to say we’ve finally finished the book. It’s out this Thursday. I have a hunch it will be one of the most attacked books this year! Will tell you more about it later today but if you can let your networks know about it, I’d really appreciate it.

April 26, 2012 — , Murdoch Book

Reviews of Dial ‘M’ for Murdoch

“You will be gobsmacked by this account”, Guardian.

“written like a thriller…a gripping account”, Joan Smith, Amazon.

“The book to sink an empire?”, Open Democracy

“A devastating book about a very dark media an political scandal”, Independent on Sunday

“…the fullest account yet of the sordid saga”, Observer

“it wasn’t journalism, it was corporate espionage”. New Statesman

2. On 30 June 2011, just under three weeks prior to receiving evidence from Mr James Murdoch and Mr Rupert Keith Murdoch, Mr Watson made the following comment in The House of Commons, having tabled an urgent question for the Secretary of State in relation to the BSkyB bid, and in so doing attributed the alleged misconduct of various individuals to “News International.”:

“The Secretary of State has granted the acquisition to an organisation that is currently the subject of three separate police inquiries, and an organisation that a Parliamentary Select Committee found guilty of “collective amnesia” of criminality at one of its newspapers. There is emerging evidence that News International conspired with convicted criminals to pervert the course of justice by hacking the phones of serving police officers and detectives, their families and the families of the victims of serious crime. At least one senior executive even collaborated with at least one career criminal while he was serving time in prison. And, most appallingly of all, while the nation grieved, the criminals who were contracted to News International illicitly targeted a parent of the children who were murdered by Ian Huntley in Soham.”

3. On 10 November 2011, Mr Watson asked Mr James Murdoch the following questions (Ev 139):

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Q1542 Mr Watson: Are you familiar with the word mafia? James Murdoch: Yes, Mr Watson

Q1543 Mr Watson: Have you ever heard the term omertà? It is the mafia term for the code of silence. James Murdoch: I am not an aficionado of such things.

Q1544: Mr Watson: Would you agree that it means a group of people who are bound together by secrecy, who together pursue their group’s business objectives with no regard for the law, using intimidation, corruption and general criminality? James Murdoch: I am not familiar with the term particularly. I have heard it vaguely.

Q1545 Mr Watson: Would you agree with me that this is an accurate description of News International in the UK? James Murdoch: Absolutely not. Frankly, I think that is offensive and it is not true.

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Appendix 3

Extracts from James Murdoch’s evidence

“Q154 Chair: When this Committee took evidence in 2009, we heard from the managing editor of the News of the World, Stuart Kuttner; the legal manager of News International, Tom Crone; the News of the World editor, Colin Myler; the former editor, Andy Coulson; and Les Hinton, the former chairman of News International. All of them told us that there had been a thorough investigation and no evidence had ever been found that anybody else was involved. That clearly was not correct. Were any of them lying to this Committee?

James Murdoch: Mr Chairman, the company relied on three things for a period of time up until the new evidence emerged. The company relied on a police investigation in 2007; I will recount this to try to take us back to that area. This is before I was involved. I became back involved in News Corporation and News International matters at the end of 2007. In the 2007 period, there was a police investigation; successful prosecutions were brought against two individuals, and the editor of the News of the World resigned. The company relied on both the police having closed the investigation and repeated assertions that there was no new evidence for them to reopen their investigation. The company relied on the PCC, which had had a report and had said that there was nothing more to this at the time. The company relied on the legal opinion of outside counsel that was brought in related to those matters, who, with respect to their review, had issued a clear opinion that there was no additional illegality other than the two individuals involved before. The company relied on those facts, and for the company in 2008 and 2009, it was not clear that there was a reason to believe that those matters were anything other than settled matters, and in the past.”

“Q155 Chair: So is it your testimony to this Committee that none of the individuals who gave us evidence in 2009 knew at that time what had been going on?

James Murdoch: I do not have direct knowledge of what they knew and at what time, but I can tell you that the critical new facts, as I saw them and as the company saw them, really emerged in the production of documentary information or evidence in the civil trials at the end of 2010. The duration from 2007 to the end of 2010 and the length of time it took for that to come clear and for that real evidence to be there is a matter of deep frustration—mine. I have to tell you that I know and I sympathise with the frustration of this Committee. It is a matter of real regret that the facts could not emerge and could not be gotten to my understanding faster.

Q158 Chair: Have you carried out your own investigation since the discovery of this information to find out the extent of involvement in phone hacking in the News of the World?

James Murdoch: We have established a group in the company, co-operating very closely with the police on their investigation. Their investigation is broad, with respect to journalistic practices, in particular journalistic practices at the News of the World, and the policy and direction that the company has given them is to co-operate fully and transparently with the police; to provide information and evidence that the company believes and they believe is relevant to those investigations, sometimes proactively, sometimes in response to those requests. Again, I think the very fact that the provision of the new information to the police in the first place when there was no police investigation ongoing that then led to, in part, the re- opening, or this new investigation being established can, I hope, be testament to some proactive action and transparency with respect to getting to the right place to find out the facts of what happened, understanding all the allegations that are coming in and moving forward to aid the police in successful completion of the important and serious work that they are doing.”

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Appendix 4

Judgment of Vos J

IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE No. HQ09X03981 CHANCERY BENCH DIVISION [2012] EWHC 85 (QB) Rolls Buildings Thursday, 19th January 2012

Before:

MR. JUSTICE VOS

B E T W E E N :

VARIOUS CLAIMANTS Claimants

- and ­

(1) NEWS GROUP NEWSPAPERS LTD (2) GLENN MICHAEL MULCAIRE Defendants ______

Transcribed by BEVERLEY F. NUNNERY & CO Official Shorthand Writers and Tape Transcribers Quality House, Quality Court, Chancery Lane, London WC2A 1HP Tel: 020 7831 5627 Fax: 020 7831 7737 [email protected] ______

MR. H. TOMLINSON QC, MR. J. REED, MR. D. SHERBORNE, MISS S. MANSOORI, (instructed by Atkins Thomason) appeared on behalf of the Claimants.

MR. M. SILVERLEAF QC, MISS D. ROSE QC, MR. G. VASSAL ADAMS, MR. A. HUDSON and M

MR. G. MILLAR QC, AND MISS A. MARZEC (instructed by Payne Hicks Beach) appeared on behalf of the 2nd Defendant.

MR. J. BEER QC appeared on behalf of the Metropolitan Police.

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______

J U D G M E N T (Approved)

MR. JUSTICE VOS:

1 This is an application for disclosure by the claimants against the first defendant in respect of two categories of electronic material, namely the documents to be found upon a maximum of six desktop computers installed for the use of six employees noted in a confidential schedule when NGN moved its premises in the autumn of 2010, or somewhat later in some other cases, and in respect of three laptop computers assigned to a senior employee also named in a confidential schedule for different periods in respect of which I am told no data is contained before 2008.

2 The matter has been strenuously argued on both sides and it is important that I bear in mind the ambit of my powers. Standard disclosure under CPR Part 31.6 is to be given in respect of only:

"(a) documents on which a party relies; and "(b) the documents which ­

"(i) adversely affect his own case;

"(ii) adversely affect another party's case; or

"(iii) support another party's case; and

"(c) the documents which he is required to disclose by a relevant Practice Direction."

3 CPR Part 31.12 under which this application is brought is in these terms:

"(1) The court may make an order for specific disclosure or specific inspection.

"(2) An order for specific disclosure is an order that a party must do one or more of the following things –

"(a) disclose documents or classes of documents specified in the order;

"(b) carry out a search to the extent stated in the order;

"(c) disclose any documents located as a result of that search.

"(3) An order for specific inspection is an order that a party permit inspection of a document referred to in rule 31.3(2)..."

Under the notes to Part 31.12(ii) it is suggested that:

"The court will take into account all the circumstances of the case and in particular the overriding objective. In Part 1 see the Practice Direction supplementing Part 31, para.5.4 ... and the concept of proportionality..."

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4 It is not suggested by Ms Dinah Rose QC, counsel for NGN, that it is beyond the jurisdiction of the court to order disclosure of these laptops and desktops. What is said in effect is that so much has been disclosed in this case and so much has been admitted in this case that it is now disproportionate, only a few weeks before trial, to require further significant effort on the part of NGN to search these laptops and desktops which, says Ms Rose, are very unlikely to produce any relevant material which will assist the court in deciding the issues that will need to be resolved at the trial.

5 It is perhaps important that I deal a little with the background to this case because Ms Rose relies upon it in saying that the present position in respect of the ten cases that are to be tried at the trial beginning on 13th February 2012 is that most of them have not even yet been pleaded and disclosure has not even yet been given in respect of them.

6 That is true but somewhat belies the real history. I ordered on 1st July 2011 that NGN should provide disclosure on generic issues by 8th August 2011, and whilst some limited disclosure was given on 8th and 24th August 2011, on 12th September 2011 NGN said that it had identified a further 700 boxes of relevant material. On 13th September 2011 I made an order for specific disclosure and on 27th September 2011 NGN gave such specific disclosure, and on 3rd October 2011 solicitors for NGN wrote that they had found what have been described as data pools 3 and 7. Data pool 3, as I remember, contains deleted emails which were being reconstructed and were not yet available for searching. Since then I have made a number of orders for disclosure, and it is true that NGN have gone to considerable technical and administrative efforts to ensure that they have given disclosure of emails and electronic data from the data pools identified. But all that went not only to the matters that are to be tried in specific cases, many of which have settled, which is why the ten cases that are now going to be tried have not yet been pleaded, but also went to the generic issues.

7 It is also true, as Ms Rose says, that on 13th December 2011, after a significant amount of encouragement from the court, NGN has admitted a number of matters in dispute, and in particular, which is relevant to this application, they have said something about the following request for an admission. The request for an admission was:

"That senior employees and directors of NGN knew about its wrongdoing and sought to conceal it by ­

"(a) putting out public statements they knew to be false; and/or

"(b) deliberately failing to provide the police with all the facts and matters of which it was aware; and

"(c) deliberately deceiving the police in respect of the purpose of payments to the second defendants; and

"(d) destroying evidence of wrongdoing, which evidence included a very substantial number of emails and the computers of journalists A-C which had been in use during the arrangement." [That is the arrangement with Mr. Mulcaire, the second defendant]

In response to that request for an admission, on 13th December 2011 the first defendant, NGN, said the following:

"NGN is unable to make any admission as to the state of knowledge, motivation or states of mind of the unidentified 'senior employees and directors' referred to at paragraph 52 of the notice to admit which are not within its knowledge. Neither is it able to admit or deny the unparticularised allegations set out at paragraphs 52(a)-(d). Without prejudice to these non-admissions, and solely in the interests of the prompt and efficient termination of these claims, the first defendant consents to the assessment of aggravated damages by the court on the basis of the facts alleged at paragraph 52."

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8 Thus, the position with which the court is faced is that it has an admission of sorts to the effect that NGN is content that aggravated damages shall be assessed on the basis of the somewhat startling admissions that I have read out, but not content that either liability or exemplary damages should be assessed or considered on that basis. Miss Rose has agreed to take instructions as to whether the admission can be taken further so that the court can proceed upon the basis of the paragraph that I read being true for the purpose of these proceedings and only for the purpose of these proceedings. Otherwise, it seems to me, it may be quite difficult for the court to bifurcate its mental facilities into knowing something being the case for one part of the case but not for another part of the case. But leaving that on one side, the reason why I have dealt with the "admissions" in such detail is because Ms Rose's asks rhetorically: what is the point in ordering more disclosure when the court can assume that there was deliberate deletion of material by NGN, deliberate concealment of material? Seeing any documents that may be relevant to that deliberate deletion will not, says Ms Rose, take the matter any further.

9 Mr Reed, counsel for the Claimants, has shown me a number of emails in support of his application. It may be noted that these requests for disclosure do not primarily concern emails stored on these computers, because the emails that were deleted from NGN’s servers have been retrieved by a complicated technical process. I have been shown a number of emails which are confidential, and therefore I will not read them out, but suffice it to say that they show a rather startling approach to the email record of NGN and they show, because this much has been said in open court, that only three days after the solicitors for Sienna Miller had written their letter before action, asking specifically that NGN should retain any emails concerned with the claim in relation to phone hacking, what happened was that a previously conceived plan to delete emails was put into effect at the behest of senior management.

10 In that state of affairs, it is not surprising that the court is likely to be somewhat suspicious and circumspect about the contention that enough is enough where disclosure is concerned. As I said in the course of argument, if I had acceded to suggestions back in the early part of 2011 that disclosure was not necessary because admissions had been made, the entire course of the phone hacking history might be very different from what it has been. It seems to me that one of the arguments that Mr. Reed is able to advance is that the material that may be found on particularly the three laptops that belong to an unidentified senior employee of NGN and do contain data post 2008 may well, on the evidence of the emails that I have already been shown, contain documents, or possibly even emails from another email address, which may bear upon the policy of deletion. It seems to me that it would be very far from disproportionate to require that those laptops be searched to uncover any further material which goes to the policy of deletion. It could, for example, contain material which bears not only on the time at which the documents being deleted were prepared, but also on why the concealment was being undertaken. That might have a considerable effect on the question of exemplary damages which is hotly contested both in fact and in law in this case and if, for example, there were emails which explain why deletion was so important then that could, as I say, bear on that question of exemplary damages because it could unlock another part of this case. Of course I cannot say that it will, but I have to consider, against the background of the provisions in the CPR that I have read out, whether it can be said to be proportionate to require this further search of these three laptops and the six desktops.

11 As regards the three laptops, it will be apparent from what I have already said that I am entirely satisfied that these laptops should be disclosed, or rather they should be searched for the purposes of giving disclosure relevant to the issues pleaded in the generic particulars of claim which have recently been filed. It seems to me that there is a distinct possibility that they will contain material relating to the deliberate deletion of documents and/or emails and that they may go beyond just colour but may, as I say, indicate further information as to precisely why deletion was taking place, and which may go well beyond the scope of the present admissions by NGN.

A31595736 45

12 As regards the desktops, the matter is slightly less clear as it seems to me because as Ms Rose has submitted, these are desktops used by journalists only after autumn 2010 and at a time when the policy of deletion was already in place. Therefore it seems, as Ms Rose says, somewhat unlikely that if NGN had decided to delete incriminating material that it would have happily, if I can put it that way, transferred the material across from the old desktops to the new desktops without deleting it. That of course may, however, have happened inadvertently. It is something of a long shot in the sense that there is also the point that the emails on these machines will have already been thrown up on the email reconstruction searches that have been undertaken and, therefore, we are talking only about documents that might be on the computer hard drive alone, or emails from private emails addresses which have found their way onto a hard disc on the new computer which is again something of a long shot.

13 The reason why I intend to order that these hard discs of the laptops be searched for relevant material is simply that in this case all that the claimants are asking is that the hard discs are interrogated to see whether there are any documents at the relevant time when phone interception was taking place. The defendants have been able to say very clearly in relation to the laptops that there are no documents that precede 2008 and, even from my limited computer experience, it is quite clear to me that without too much difficulty the defendants could look at these hard drives and arrange the material on the hard drive in date order and see almost at a glance whether there were any documents that preceded 2010. If they do that then it would immediately become apparent if all the documents had been transferred across to the new drive. If they have, which does seem somewhat unlikely, they will be discloseable. If they have not then I will not be requiring that they go further and check every document on the desktops to see whether a new document prepared by a journalist could be relevant to concealment or anything of that kind. That seems to me to be very remote from the realistic or sensible inquiry that needs to be undertaken at this stage. But I do want NGN to look at these journalists' desktops, notwithstanding that they are new desktops and notwithstanding the policy of deletion, just to make sure that there are no contemporaneous documents pre-2010 that have been, probably inadvertently, transferred across and now do exist. Because the other computers have been destroyed, Mr. Reed has submitted, and as it seems to me perfectly sensibly submitted, there is a dearth of documentation from the relevant time. Whilst there is some, there is certainly not everything and so I think it is not disproportionate to require that limited inquiry to be made of desktops and I shall do so.

14 I would not want to leave this judgment without saying that I do understand the efforts which NGN have gone to to give disclosure and make amends for the past misconduct, and the court is not unsympathetic to the substantial efforts that have had to be undertaken. But the fact that the major resources available to NGN have to be employed in order to make sure that this case can be fairly tried is not something that the court should shy away from. This is a case of great public importance. It is obviously the subject of the Leveson inquiry and the subject of likely criminal proceedings against many people, and it would be quite undesirable for this case to be tried on any kind of false basis. That would be disadvantageous, as much for the defendants as for the claimants, and I am very keen that every step is taken which is necessary to ensure that I have before me all available material that is relevant to the issues that I shall have to try to make sure that I can reach what is the just solution. I know I say this often when we meet on these occasions, but I am very concerned to reach a conclusion which is sustainable and useful for future cases. I know that many cases have settled and I know that the whole of this case may settle, so that it may not happen in February 2012 at all, but if it does happen I want it to achieve the objectives that I have set down for it and that is to provide a blue print or a yardstick against which other cases can be measured so that it will not be necessary to go round this track again. It is for that reason that I want to make sure that we uncover every document that could be relevant. That will, as I have said, be for the benefit of all parties because then the assessment of damages that I make and the blue print that I lay down for the assessment of damages in other cases that come forward will be dependable. If I were to accede to a desire to limit the scope of the enquiry the risk would always remain in the minds, not only of the claimants but of any third party observers that a proper job had not been done, and that the judgment that I gave was based upon a false premise. I want to make sure my

A31595736 46

judgment is based upon a dependable and reliable premise so that it carries authority and can be used for the purpose originally specified.

15 So for those reasons I intend to order the disclosure in the form that I have indicated, and I hope that counsel will draw up the appropriate minutes of order. ______

A31595736 47

Appendix 5

Eleventh Report, Ev 228 Written evidence submitted by BCL Burton Copeland

Thank you for your letter of 16 August 2011 relating to the investigation of claims that the Committee was misled during its predecessor's 2009 inquiry into Press Standards, Privacy and Libel.

We are happy to provide the information you request. We understand that Messrs Linklaters solicitors, on behalf of the Management and Standards Committee of News Corporation, wrote to you on 22 July 2011 setting out the position in respect of BCL Burton Copeland (‘BCL’).

BCL was not instructed by News Corporation (or News Group Newspapers Ltd or News International Ltd) at any time in 2007. The involvement of BCL prior to 2007 is set out below.

On 16 August 2006, BCL was instructed by News Group Newspapers Ltd to assist in dealing with requests from the Metropolitan Police Service for information relating to its then investigation consequent on the arrest of Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire on 8 August 2006 for “phone hacking”. On behalf of News Group Newspapers Ltd, BCL subsequently provided information and documentation to the Metropolitan Police Service in response to its requests and consequently no formal Court Order under the Police & Criminal Evidence Act 1984, as had originally been contemplated, was sought or obtained by the police.

On 21 September 2006 BCL wrote to the Metropolitan Police Service responding to requests and offering any further assistance which it may have required. That letter was collected by hand on 25 September 2006 and no further requests for assistance were received by BCL relating to that investigation. Therefore BCL acted for News Group Newspapers Ltd between 16 August and 25 September 2006.

BCL was not instructed to carry out an investigation into “phone hacking” at the ‘News of the World’.

BCL did not act again for News Group Newspapers Ltd or News International Ltd until instructions were received on 25 January 2011 with regard to what were to become the present police investigations.

We trust this information is of assistance.

30 August 2011

ANNEX: Letter from Linklaters LLP

We are instructed by the Management and Standards Committee of News Corporation.

We wish to clarify a point given in evidence before your Committee on the 21 July 2009 by Mr Colin Myler and Mr Tom Crone. That evidence suggested that, in 2007, a firm of solicitors, BCL Burton Copeland LLP (“BCL”), undertook an investigation into wrongdoing at the News of the World.

In fact, BCL were not instructed to and did not carry out any such investigation. BCL were instructed solely in relation to providing assistance to, and co-operation with, the Metropolitan Police service.

A31595736 48

The only external investigation carried out was the email review undertaken by Messrs Harbottle & Lewis in the context of the appeal from dismissal brought by Mr Goodman. That is the review which was the subject of evidence given to your Committee on Tuesday and which resulted in the letter of advice from Harbottle & Lewis dated 29 May 2007, a copy of which has already been provided to your Committee.

22 July 2011

A31595736 49

Appendix 6

Ev 321 – Volume 2 CMSSC Second Report of Session 2009 – 2010

Extract from the evidence of Mr Coulson to the CMSSC

Q1550 Mr Ainsworth: Good morning. Do you want to say something first?

Mr Coulson: Would you mind? I know that time is of the essence, but I wondered if I might take a couple of minutes just to make a few comments that might save some time in the long term. Good morning. I was, as you know, Editor of the News of the World for four years from January 2003 until January 2007. During that time I never condoned the use of ‘phone hacking and nor do I have any recollection of incidences where ‘phone hacking took place. My instructions to the staff were clear: we did not use subterfuge of any kind unless there was a clear public interest in doing so; they were to work within the PCC Code at all times.

Q1554 Mr Ainsworth: Even if the system had been as it is now you still would not have known?

Mr Coulson: Sure, I understand. I do not think I can say that with certainty, no, because what we had with the Clive Goodman case was a reporter who deceived the managing editor’s office and, in turn, deceived me. I have thought long and hard about this (I did when I left): what could I have done to have stopped this from happening? But if a rogue reporter decides to behave in that fashion I am not sure that there is an awful lot more I could have done.

Q1555 Mr Ainsworth: So your immediate response on hearing this was, presumably, surprise?

Mr Coulson: Yes, and anger.

A31595736 50 Committee of Privileges Tel 020 7219 3259 Fa x 020 7219 5952 Email [email protected] Website www.parliament.uk/privileges

From Lynn Gardner, Clerk of the Committee

Linklaters LLP One Silk Street London EC2Y 8HQ

30 June 2016

By post and email

Dear Sirs

Eleventh Report of Session 2010-2012 from the Culture Media and Sport Committee

The matters contained in this letter and enclosures are to be kept in strict confidence. I enclose draft paragraphs from the Committee of Privileges, setting out the matters on which the Committee is minded to criticise your client. This is accordance with the Committee's Resolution of 12 January 2016, adopting that of the previous Committee of 3 July 2012, that:

9) If the Committee intends to criticise a subject of the inquiry it will first send a warning letter, and such a letter will:

(a) state what the criticism is;

(b) contain a statement of the facts that the Committee considers substantiate the criticism; and

(c) refer to any evidence which supports those facts.

These paragraphs set out the allegations made in the CMS report, the evidence before the CMS Committee and made available since, this Committee's analysis of that evidence and the findings the Committee is minded to make. The Committee will consider responses to the warning letters before reporting to the House. The procedural points raised in earlier submissions will be dealt with in the final report, but do not form part of the criticisms. They are therefore not covered by paragraph 9 of the resolution and so will not be shared with you in draft in advance of the report's publication. Following a request from one of the inquiry subjects, the Committee approached the CPS for further documents which the CPS subsequently released to the Committee. I enclose this additional material in accordance with our policy on disclosure but you will see that the Committee draws no further inference from this evidence in its conclusions. The Resolution allows two weeks for any further submissions. The deadline for any response from you is therefore 5.00 pm on Thursday 14 July.

Lynn Gardner Clerk of the Committee of Privileges

2 Linklaters Lmklaters LLP One Silk Street London EC2Y 8HQ Telephone (+44) 20 7456 2000 Facs1m1le (+44 ) 20 7456 2222

Dr Lynn Gardner Clerk of the Committee Committee of Privileges www.parliament.uk/privileges

By Email 14 July 2016

Our Ref

Dear Sirs

Eleventh Report of Session 2010-12 from the Culture, Media and Sport Committee ("CMSC"), News International and Phone-hacking

Thank you for providing News UK with the opportunity to consider and to comment upon the draft of the Committee's Report together with its conclusions. There is only one matter. which is in relation to the Criminal Justice Act statement of Colin Myler. that we wish to invite the Committee to consider.

Paragraphs 30 and 31 of the draft Report deal with the statement made by Colin Myler to the Metropolitan Police dated 21 December 2011 . We note that the draft reproduces submissions made on behalf of News UK. In particular the concerns expressed in News UK's response that the statement in question was not utilised by the Crown Prosecution Service in any of the criminal proceedings that were to take place. and that when Mr Myler gave oral evidence to the CMSSC on 5 May 2009, 21 July 2009 and 6 September 2011 and he made no reference to the events referred to in that statement.

We invite the Committee to consider whether. in those circumstances, and recognising that the statement still remains 'unused material' of the Crown Prosecution Service and the Metropolitan Police, it would be preferable if the facts referred to by Mr Myler were not rehearsed in the Report in so far as that can be avoided. There would, we submit, be good reasons for continuing to treat those facts as confidential and for not releasing them into the public domain or annexing the statement in question to the Report. Specifically:

(i) the matters in question have never been tried or tested for their veracity or accuracy in any court proceedings or in evidence before any Parliamentary Committee; and

(ii) they are capable of leading to inaccurate public speculation about the role of the particular individuals described in the statement in circumstances where it is clear that the Committee have decided to place no reliance on the material in question and have made no specific findings in relation to it.

We appreciate that the Committee may have good reasons for referring to Mr Myler's statement in the context of other aspects of its Report and which are unrelated to the issues which have been under

This communica11on 1s confidential and may be privileged or otherwise protected by work product 1mmun11y

L1nklaters LLP 1s a hm11ed hab1h ty pannersh1p registered in England and Wales with registered number OC326345 It 1s a la,•, firm authorised and regulated by the Sol1ci1ors Regutauon Authority The term pan ner 1n relation to L1nklaters LLP 1s used to refer to a member of L1nklaters LLP or an employee or consultant of Linklaters LLP or any of 11s affll1aled firms or en11t1es with equivalent standing and quahf1ca11ons A hst of the names of the members of Linklaters LLP together with a fist of those non-members who are designated as panners and their professional quahfical1ons 1s open lo inspection at its registered office. One Silk Street, London EC2Y 8HQ or on www l1nklaters.com and such persons are either sohc11ors, registered foreign lawyers or European lawyers

Please refer 10 www hnklaters com/regulauon for 1mponant 1nformahon on L1nklaters LLP·s regulatory pos111on A32229162 Linklaters

investigation concerning News International. If so, and it is therefore considered necessary to refer to the content of this statement, we invite the Committee to consider confining the references to the facts which have been asserted in the statement simply to Mr Myler's claim that he became aware of the information in question on 11 July 2009, without providing further detail of the identity of the other individuals mentioned. If not, then we would invite the Committee, in the light of its overall conclusions, to consider whether it is necessary to make reference to the facts asserted by Mr Myler in that statement at all.

Yours faithfully

Linklaters LLP

A32229162 Page 2 of 2 Committee of Privileges Tel 020 7219 3259 Fax 020 7219 5952 Email [email protected] Website www.parliament.uk/privileges

From Lynn Gardner, Clerk of the Committee

Linklaters LLP One Silk Street London EC2Y 8HQ

21 July 2016

By post and email

Dear Sirs

Eleventh Report of Session 2010-2012 from the Culture Media and Sport Committee

The Committee on Privileges has asked me to acknowledge your submission of 14 July, the contents of which it has considered carefully. I shall write to you again in early September to let you know when the Committee expects to conclude its inquiry.

Lynn Gardner Clerk of the Committee of Privileges