The Leveson inquiry

EARLY next month Lord Justice Leveson, who has spent the past three months scrutinising the wicked British press, proceeds to examine the relationship between the press and the police. Today there came an early hint about just how ugly the revelations from that phase of the inquiry are likely to prove.

Last July reporters at the Guardian newspaper broke the story that the News of the World had got hold of messages left on the mobile phone of Milly Dowler, a girl who disappeared in 2002 and was subsequently found to have been murdered. This, and a catalogue of other awful revelations, brought down the News of the World, at the time Britain’s biggest Sunday newspaper. 

The Parliamentary Culture, Media and Sport Committee has now released a letter from Surrey police, which was investigating Dowler’s disappearance. This details the police force’s early contacts with the News of the World. The letter says nothing about an issue that has preoccupied the London media village for the past month or so—whether the Guardian was correct in reporting that Dowler’s voicemails had been deleted, giving false hope to her parents that she might be alive. But it does reveal something just as shocking.

On April 13th 2002, according to the coppers, they were told that the News of the World was in possession of voicemail messages from Dowler’s phone. The police were also told the contents of those messages. The News of the World was then following what turned out to be an unfruitful line of investigation—that Dowler had registered with an employment agency. And how had the News of the World got hold of these messages? Because, it was explained to the police, the newspaper had obtained Dowler’s phone number and PIN code from other school children. 

On April 20th an e-mail to the police helpfully summarised the situation. “As you are aware, last Saturday evening (13 April) the News of the World contacted the Dowler squad with information we had received,” the e-mail stated. “In the course of a conversation with [a police officer] we passed on information about messages left on Amanda Dowler’s mobile phone”. The email went on to explain that the newspaper had offered to supply a tape recording of the messages “and other evidence”. 

Liberal use of a redacting black pen means it is difficult to ascertain who was speaking to the police. What is not difficult to ascertain is the significance of what the coppers were told. Accessing someone else’s voicemail messages is a crime. (When the police wanted to listen to Dowler’s messages, they obtained a court order.) Surrey’s police were told that the News of the World had obtained voicemail messages left on Dowler’s phone, were told what they contained and were given the opportunity to listen to them. Apparently, they did nothing.