Phone hacking: Paddick joins legal action against Met
by Peter Wozniak
Brian Paddick, former deputy assistant commissioner for the Metropolitan police, has initiated judicial review proceedings against his former force over the phone hacking row.
Mr Paddick joins Labour MP Chris Bryant and writer Brendan Montague in taking legal proceedings against the force, arguing that the police failed to inform them that they may have had their voicemails hacked into.
The lawyer Tamsin Allen is representing all three claimants, and said: “Our clients have still not been told the whole story about how their names came to be in the papers seized during the phone hacking investigation in 2006 and why they were not warned that their privacy might have been compromised.
“The court will now determine whether or not the Metropolitan police breached its public law and human rights obligations in the way it handled this investigation and its aftermath.”
The move adds to the steadily mounting pressure on Andy Coulson, who at the time of the original police investigation, when he was editor of the News of the World, claimed he had no knowledge whatsoever of the practice which saw the paper’s royal editor jailed in 2007.
The Metropolitan police were alleged to have limited the scope of their investigation to spare its relationship with News International, which owns the News of the World.
Mr Coulson, who resigned as editor of the News of the World over the issue, is now the prime minister’s director of communications.
At the time, David Cameron dismissed accusations of his complicity in the scandal, arguing he should be given a second chance.
The row has however erupted once again following a New York Times investigation quoting several former News of the World journalists saying the practice was widespread and actively encouraged by Coulson when he was editor.
