Scotland Yard applies to strike out lawsuit by solicitor representing victims of phone hacking
Scotland Yard is to contest a lawsuit that could establish the true number of victims in the News of the World phone-hacking scandal.
Mark Lewis, a solicitor who has acted for people suing the newspaper, contends that a senior figure in the Metropolitan police, Detective Sergeant Mark Maberly, told him in 2008 that as many as 6,000 phones may have been hacked.
Lewis repeated this conversation when giving evidence to the culture, media and sport select committee inquiry into allegations of phone hacking by the newspaper and a private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire.
The Met insists that Maberly, now a detective inspector, did not give Lewis the 6,000 figure, or tell the solicitor he would give him "enough rope to hang them" as Lewis maintains.
The Met's denial prompted Lewis to launch a libel claim that the force will seek to strike out in court on Thursday and thus close down a line of inquiry that could reveal the extent of the evidence it holds relating to the scandal.
"This is about my reputation," Lewis said. "The police accused me of lying about my conversation."
To support his libel action, Lewis is demanding that the Met hand over documents taken from Mulcaire's office that could establish the number of phone-hacking victims. So far, only documents relating to the growing number of celebrities who have launched civil actions against the News of the World have been released.
Lewis told the parliamentary select committee that, based on his conversation with Maberly, he had been led to believe "they had found there were something like 6,000 people who were involved. It was not clear to me whether that was 6,000 phones that had been hacked or 6,000 people including the people who had left messages."
Maberly's alleged comments to Lewis contrast starkly with statements made by other senior officers in the Metropolitan police.
Andy Hayman, a former assistant commissioner at the Met, who led the original investigation, has said there were only a "handful" of victims.
John Yates, the acting commissioner who led a follow-up investigation, told the home affairs select committee that "the voicemail pin codes of up to 120 people were discovered".
In response to concerns that it failed to conduct a sufficiently thorough investigation into the News of the World's phone-hacking activities, the Met has launched a new inquiry conducted by deputy assistant commissioner Sue Akers and involving 45 detectives.
But MPs have called for an outside force to launch its own investigation.
Earlier this month Paul Farrelly, a member of the culture and media committee, wrote to the director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer, to express his concerns about the Crown Prosecution Service's role in the affair.
"At every twist and turn, the CPS simply 'rubber-stamped' the Metropolitan police's approach. The CPS' public statements, indeed, appeared to be a 'cut and paste' of the police's stance," Farrelly wrote. "It is time not only for the Metropolitan police's conduct and approach to be independently reviewed, but the CPS's as well."
In his response, Starmer said a new review of the evidence collected by Scotland Yard, to be conducted by a senior CPS prosecutor, would be "rigorous and robust".
In response to Lewis's libel action, a spokeswoman for the Met said: "We can confirm that the Metropolitan Police Service is making an application to strike out the claim. It would be inappropriate to comment further at this stage."
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/feb/26/phone-hacking-libel-metropolitan-police
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