Apologies for phone-hacking: News International gives up the fight
By Ian Dunt
News International has backed down significantly in its battle against its critics on the issue of phone-hacking.
The corporation will offer an “unreserved apology” to some civil litigants and set up a compensation fund to settle many of the claims, it has said.
“Past behaviour at the News of the World in relation to voicemail interception is a matter of genuine regret,” the company said.
“It is now apparent that our previous inquiries failed to uncover important evidence and we acknowledge our actions were not sufficiently robust.”
The move, which had become all but inevitable after months of legal challenges by a wide variety of public figures, is a clear effort to try to put the long-running controversy to bed.
The decision of the company, a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, to admit its liability in the practise suggests it is finally prepared to give up on its often-repeated insistence that only one rogue reporter was responsible for phone-hacking.
News International is reported to have approached Mr Justice Vos to make a group litigation order, as a way of sweeping away the cases it is facing in one go with relatively limited costs
The move may help to limit the damage News International will suffer over the row, but the issue has now spread far enough that it will be difficult to kill off altogether.
A Metropolitan police investigation is ongoing, with two News of the World journalists arrested earlier this week.
There are also recriminations at the highest level about the police’s decision not to pursue the case harder when it first came across it.
Earlier this week director of public prosecutions (DPP) Keir Starmer wrote a letter to MPs bringing into question testimony from acting deputy Met commissioner John Yates.
The letter could bring the Commons into potential conflict with the upper levels of Scotland Yard.
