The smell worsens around the Metropolitan Police
Published in: Melanie's blog
I have said repeatedly that the really disturbing element in the News of the World scandal is the behaviour of the Metropolitan Police. But even I did not foresee quite how disturbing this would prove to be.
We know that – for reasons which still remain opaque – in July 2009 it chose not to reopen and widen its investigation into the full extent of the paper’s criminal activities in hacking or ‘blagging’ untold numbers of mobile phones. We have also read the deeply disturbing claims, so far unsubstantiated, of corrupt payments running to tens of thousands of pounds made by the newspaper to unknown Met police officers.
This morning Neil Wallis, who was deputy editor at the News of the World under Andy Coulson, was arrested by the Metropolitan Police in connection with the hacking scandal. Astoundingly, however, it turns out that last year the Met actually paid Wallis as a public relations adviser to provide ‘strategic communication advice’ to the Met Commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson.
Channel Four News reported earlier:
It is estimated that Mr Wallis earned £24,000 for his two-day consultancy work for the force from October 2009 to September 2010.
The Met today put out this statement:
Chamy Media, owned by Neil Wallis, former Executive Editor of the News of the World, was appointed to provide strategic communication advice and support to the MPS, including advice on speech writing and PR activity, while the Met's Deputy Director of Public Affairs was on extended sick leave recovering from a serious illness.
In line with MPS/MPA procurement procedures, three relevant companies were invited to provide costings for this service on the basis of two days per month. Chamy Media were appointed as they were significantly cheaper than the others. The contract ran from October 2009 until September 2010, when it was terminated by mutual consent. The Commissioner has made the Chair of the police authority aware of this contract.
Pick yourself up off the floor. There’s more. It turns out that Assistant Commissioner John Yates, the Met officer who has been failing convincingly to explain exactly why he decided in 2009 not to re-open and widen the police investigation in to the News of the World even though thousands of pieces of evidence were languishing unread in bin bags, dined with Wallis on a number of occasions this year -- after the Met did finally re-open its investigation with Operation Weeting.
On his blog today Tom Watson, the Labour MP who has been making much of the running in uncovering this affair, records an exchange last March at the Commons Culture, Media and sport select committee when Yates admitted to meeting Wallis after Operation Weeting had begun. Last April, Watson wrote to the Metropolitan Police Authority thus:
I am particularly concerned that Mr Yates appears to have had private lunches with an individual at News of the World who was line managing an employee now subject to a criminal investigation.
That letter, of course, was sent well before today’s arrest of Neil Wallis himself.
Wait – there’s more. It was also reported today that the Metropolitan Commissioner himself, Sir Paul Stephenson, also had dinner with Wallis -- during the first police investigation into the NoW scandal back in 2006, and only a few weeks after the paper’s former Royal correspondent Clive Goodman (who went to prison over the scandal) had been arrested. Sir Paul now says:
I do not believe that on any occasion I have acted inappropriately. I am very satisfied with my own integrity.
In fact, this contact was actually noted some time ago; the Guardian’s Nick Davies recorded it on his own blog last February. But the Telegraph is now reporting that Sir Paul had no fewer than eight meetings with Wallis while he was an executive at the News of the World. And this evening the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, summoned Sir Paul to what Sky News described as a ‘massive showdown’ over these revelations – following which it was announced that Sir Paul would, at the Mayor’s suggestion, ask Lord Justice Leveson to include consideration of the circumstances surrounding the employment of Neil Wallis by the Met as part of his inquiry into the scandal. Now there are calls for Sir Paul to resign.
So let’s get this clear: a police force which strangely refused to re-open an investigation into a newspaper's alleged criminal activity, while concerns were still being raised three months later employed as an adviser on improving its own public relations the former deputy editor of that very newspaper, a man who has now been arrested in connection with those allegations – and who had repeatedly dined with both the very officer who had failed to re-open the inquiry as well as with the officer who was eventually to go on to head the force.
In the light of all this, how can anyone have any faith at all in the Metropolitan Police? And is not this gathering crisis in Britain’s most important police force of rather more importance for the country than the fate of one media organisation?
