Yates faces MPs again over hacking
Rolling coverage of all the day's political developments as they happen
12.15pm: Yates says the investigation was re-opened solely because new information was provided by News International. It was not re-opened because the Crown Prosecution Service changed its interpretation of the law last autumn.
12.13pm: Mark Reckless, a Conservative, asks why Yates was not bothered about the Crown Prosecution Service changing its legal advice.
Yates says: "Our job is to uphold the law, not make the law."
12.08pm: Julian Huppert, a Lib Dem member of the committee, asks about the letter that Keir Starmer, the director of public prosecutions, sent to the Guardian saying that Yates had quoted Starmer on this subject out of context.
Yates says he was "mystified" by this allegation. He does not think he did quote Starmer out of context. But he says he has "no desire to get into a public spat with the DPP".
Vaz says Starmer will be giving evidence himself to the committee.
12.05pm: David Winnick, a Labour member of the committee, asks if the investigation would have been reopened if it had not been for people like Chris Bryant raising the issue.
Yates says the Met is responding to public concern.
Winnick asks if it was appropriate for him to accept hospitality from News International.
Yates says he has to engage with the media. He has probably had more lunches with the Guardian than with News International, he says.
Until a few months ago only two people had been convicted as a result of the phone hacking inquiry. It would be odd if he could not engage with a big media organisation just because of that, he says.
11.57am: Keith Vaz says that John Yates wrote to the committee asking to give evidence. Although Yates said last week that it was odd being asked to appear before two committees, that is why he has been asked to appear, Vaz says.
Vaz asks Yat! es if he misled the committee.
Yates says he sat at the back for Bryant's evidence. Bryant made a very important concession, he says. Bryant admitted that the Met was originally told that an offence was only committed if there was proof that a hacker heard a message before the intended recipient had listened to it.
Yates says the Crown Prosecution Service subsequently said that a wider interpretation of the law could apply. (The CPS said hacking was an offence, even if the message had been listened to at the time it was hacked.)
Yates says the CPS were entitled to change their view. This happens all the time, he says.
Vaz says he would be "pretty cross" if he had been in Yates's position and had been told that that the orginal advice was wrong.
Yates says the legal advice has never been tested in the courts. Some defence lawyers would argue that the orginal, narrow interpretation was still the correct one, he says.
11.57am: Chris Bryant has finished giving evidence. John Yates is appearing now.
11.55am: Bryant says his main complaint is that the police had evidence of criminality but did not interrogate him.
Keith Vaz asks Bryant if he has met Yates.
Bryant says Yates wrote to him threatening to sue him. At the bottom of that letter Yates offered a meeting. Bryant says he did not take that as a friendly invitation. He is now involved in legal action with the Met.
11.55am: Bryant says that some mobile phone companies tell customers when they think their phones have been hacked. Some don't. But they all should, he says.
11.52am: Chris Bryant says Andy Hayman, who ran the original phone hacking investigation, is now working as a News International columnist.
He also says that the police have never investigated Rebekah Brooks, the News International chief executive, even though she effectively admitted to a crime when she told the culture committee in 2003 that her journalists had paid police officers for information. (Bryant was on the culture ! committe e at the time and he was the MP who put the question.)
11.47am: Bryant says the original prosecution does not seem to have had a deterrent effect. Kelly Hoppen had her phone hacked last year. A senior MP (who he does not name) has had her phone hacked within the last few months, he says.
Bryant says there is a real danger that the Met can be seen as being "in collusion" with News International.
Last week Yates defended the fact that he had taken hospitality from News of the World executives. Bryant suggests that these meetings were a mistake.
Yates had lunch with Neil Wallis, a former News of the World executive, in February, Bryant says. Bryant wonders whether Yates told the officer currently leading the new phone hacking investigation about this.
11.45am: Bryant says if the police found a name alongside a list of phone numbers, they should have taken those numbers to the person identified and asked him or her about them. The police did not do this, he says.
In response to a question from Bryant, he says the police have now been in touch with him to tell him about his phone being hacked.
11.41am: Mark Reckless, a Conservative, asks Bryant if he thinks Yates deliberately misled the home affairs committee.
Bryant says that a note written by Scotland Yard in 2006 says that a "vast number" of people had had their phones hacked.
Reckless says that this suggests Yates was deliberately misleading the committeed.
"Quite," says Bryant.
Bryant says it was "disingenuous in the extreme" of Yates to suggest that there were very few victims because the police had never bothered to look at the evidence properly.
11.37am: Keith Vaz, the chairman, asks Bryant if he accepts that the Crown Prosecution Service originally told the police that a hacker would have to listen to a message before it had been heard by the intended recipient for an offence to be committed.
Bryant says that he accepts that a lawyer may have said this to the police.
But he says he thinks Yates's evidence on this last week was "somewhat disingenuous". He says that he wants to tell the committee about the other areas where he thinks Yates misled MPs. But Vaz says he wants to concentrate for the moment on the issue of the legal advice.11.32am: Chris Bryant is giving evidence to the committee first. John Yates will appear at 12pm.
Bryant starts with an opening statement.
Bryant says Yates told the home affairs committee on 7 September 2010 that there was no evidence that MPs had had their phones hacked. But at least eight MPs have had their phones hacked, he says.
Yates said a hacker had to listen to a message before the intended recipient had heard it for an offence to be committed. But Keir Starmer, the director of public prosecutions, has said that this legal definition played no part in the original inquiry, he says.
11.22am: It's Groundhog Day for John Yates. Last week he appeared before the Commons culture committee to answer allegations - made by Chris Bryant in a Commons debate earlier this month - that he misled MPs when he gave evidence about the legal advice given to police when they first investigated phone hacking. For almost two hours, he endured a fairly undignified duffing up. You can read Nick Davies's story about the hearing here, and Simon Hoggart's sketch here. Now Yates has got to go through the whole thing all over again. The home affairs committee has invited him to appear because he originally gave evidence to it about phone hacking as well as to the culture committee. Keith Vaz, the chairman of the home affairs committee, clearly does not want to feel left out. At the end of last week's hearing Yates suggested he was unhappy abou! t the pr ospect of having to answer the same questions twice. But is he going to nick Vaz and his colleagues for wasting police time? I doubt it.
The hearing will start soon.
11.18am: Most people in the Labour party are opposed to AV, Lord Reid, the former Labour cabinet minister, told BBC News this morning. According to PoliticsHome, this is what he said:
My view is quite simple. If the vast majority of the people in the Labour Party, as I believe they are, are opposed to AV and want to defend one person one vote - as well as the vast majority of people in the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties as well - then I'm on the side of the mainstream majority on this one.
11.02am: Could "bling back" become official government policy? It's a term in a report published by Lady Newlove, the government's champion for safer communities, to describe money made from the sale of drug dealers' assets being given to the communities they blighted. Newlove is in favour of "bling back" and also "community reward" - money being given to communities to spend on crime prevention initiatives as a reward when people pass on information leading to criminals being convicted. There are more details of the report in this Home Office news release. James Brokenshire, the crime prevention minister, has praised Newlove for her contribution.
10.49am: Matthew Elliott, the No to AV campaign director, wasn't impressed by the line up at this morning's pro-AV rally. (See 9.20am and 10.34am.) He's put out this statement.
Yes to AV claim they are the "people's campaign" but today's launch looked like a Lib Dem convention chaired by Ed Miliband. The only person missing from their Westminster photo-op is the man who is forcing us to have this expensive referendum: Nick Clegg. It was he that bargained away his promise on tuition fees for a referendum on the Alternative Vote! . It wou ld be his party the Lib Dems that would benefit most from a switch to AV. The Yes to AV campaign is just a front for the Lib Dems and they are deceiving the public if they claim otherwise.
10.34am: Ed Miliband told the AV rally this morning that the alternative vote would increase the chances of "progressive" parties winning elections. Here's an extract.
AV would encourage us to build bridges, not barriers, between parties so that we can persuade more voters of our case.
I believe today's political culture, which only encourages division, profoundly damages belief in politics.
Nowhere has this been more true than among the progressive forces in Britain.
I have spoken before about the progressive majority.
The tragedy for progressive politics in Britain has been that division on the centre and left has handed a united right victory after victory.
For most of the last eighty years, there has been one Conservative party but several competing for progressive votes.
No wonder the Tories back the current system.
They know Britain is not a fundamentally Conservative country.
But with first past the post, they are more likely to govern whenever progressive forces are divided.
This Tory led government and its current alliance of power with the Liberal Democrats does not change my belief that there is a progressive majority in this country.
Britain deserves an electoral system that fairly reflects voters' views.
10.28am: William Hague has met a member of the Libyan opposition. He put out this statement after his meeting with Mahmoud Jibril, an envoy from Libya's interim transitional national council (ITNC) ahead of today's Libya conference.
I was delighted to invite Mr Jabril to London today. Mr Jabril and I have spoken on several occasions over the past week and he has come to London at my request. The ITNC is an important and legitimate political interlocutor and the UK is commi! tted to strengthening our contacts with a wide range of members of the Libyan opposition who are working to create a Libya where the legitimate aspirations of its people can be met.
We discussed the current political and humanitarian situation in Libya. We agreed on the absolute importance of protecting and safeguarding civilians in Libya. We considered how best the UK as well as other attendees at today's London conference can best support the Libyan people, and I asked for Mr Jabril's assessment of the humanitarian needs in Libya and priorities for international assistance.
10.12am: Labour have just sent out Refounding Labour, a 32-page consultation document exploring ways the party needs to reform (pdf). Patrick Wintour has written a story about this for the Guardian today and he says that it could lead to registered Labour supporters being given a vote in leadership elections. The document has been written by Peter Hain, the chair of Labour's national policy forum. His report does not contain specific recommendations, but it does raise plenty of thoughtful and far-reaching questions about party organisation. Here's what Hain is saying this morning about the need for the party to change.
Since the 1950s membership of political parties has been in decline across Europe's established democracies. The UK now has one of the lowest rates of party membership of all. The 1.5 per cent of the electorate who belonged to parties in the UK in 2001 compares to nearly 5 per cent elsewhere in Europe in the late 1990s. By 2005 only 1.3 per cent of UK voters were members of any of the three main political parties, down from nearly 4 per cent in 1983.
The Labour Party's basic structure is essentially that adopted in 1918. In today's much more diffuse, individualist pol! itical c ulture, how can we maximise the potential for participation by 'Labour Supporters' - those who would not join the Party, but who could be mobilised to back and work for us? How do we manage this in a way that does not undermine the rights of 'full' members?
9.47am: The Office for National Statistics has revised its growth forecast for the fourth quarter of 2010 back to a 0.5% decrease. That's marginally better than the ONS was forecasting last month, when it put fourth quarter growth at minus 0.6%, but exactly the same as it was predicting in January, when it made its first stab at producing a figure. The ONS is still saying that the snow was to blame for growth falling by 0.5%. That means that, without the bad weather, growth would have been 0%. The economy would have been flat. That's still pretty bad.
The ONS summary is here, and the full ONS statistical bulletin is here (pdf).
9.39am: Looking at the Press Association overnight wire, I see that Labour MP Kerry McCarthy used an iPad instead of notes to prompt her when she was delivering a speech in the Commons last night. She is thought to be the first MP to use an iPad in this way in the chamber. Last week a Commons committee said that the ban on MPs using iPads "as an aide memoire" in debates should be ended.
9.27am: While we're on the subject of AV, there's a letter in the Times (paywall) today claiming that first-past-the-post is one of the reasons why Britain has been able to punch above its weight in world affairs. It sounds like a fairly spurious argument, but the letter has been signed by a heavyweight collection of signatories: William Hague, the foreign secretary, four former foreign secretaries (Margaret Beckett, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, Lord Hurd and Lord Howe) and three former Foreign Office ministers (Ke! ith Vaz, Tony Lloyd and Caroline Flint). Here's an extract.
Those of us who have represented Britain internationally know that one of the many reasons why we have always punched above our weight is our simple and straightforward voting system, a system that everyone can understand, because it gives one person, one vote.
Democracies all across the world have been founded on the example of our voting system. Today, billions of people elect their representatives through the system of one person, one vote. It took many centuries for the principle of one person, one vote to become enshrined in our democracy. And now that it is there, we believe it would be a grave error to abandon this principle and replace it with a voting system that is more complex, more confusing, more costly and more unfair.
9.20am: The Yes to Fairer Votes rally has started. BBC News has just shown a clip of Caroline Lucas, the Green leader, speaking on the platform, with Ed Miliband behind her. Here's a full list of the politicians taking part.
Ed Miliband
Shirley Williams
Caroline Lucas
John Denham
Charles Kennedy
Darren Johnson
Tessa Jowell
Tim Farron
8.47am: There's plenty to keep us busy today. London is hosting a conference about the future of Libya. Adam Gabbatt should have more details on his Libya live blog. There will be a press conference, but it won't be until late this afternoon. I'll be focusing on the domestic politics today, of which there's plenty. Here's a full list.
9am: Ed Miliband speaks at a pro-AV rally alongside Charles Kennedy and Caroline Lucas and other Labour, Lib Dem and Green politicians.
9.15am: Sir David King, the former chief scientific adviser to the government, launches a report on nuclear policy in the UK.
9.30am: Frank Field and Nadine Dorries MP! hold a press conference about amendments they are tabling to the health bill about abortion.
9.30am: The Office for National Statistics publishes its revised forecast for growth in the final quarter of 2010.
10am: Officials from the Office for Budget Responsibility and the Treasury give evidence to the Treasury committee about the budget.
10.30am: Universities UK and the Russell Group give evidence to the business committee about the future of higher education.
11.30am: Chris Bryant, the Labour MP, and John Yates, the acting deputy commissioner of the Metropolitan police, give evidence to the Commons home affairs committee about phone hacking. Bryant will appear at 11.30am, and Yates at 12pm. They will be asked about allegations that Yates misled the committee last year over the legal advice given to the police about what constitutes phone hacking. Last week Yates was grilled by the culture committee about these allegations.
2.30pm: Keir Starmer, the director of public prosecutions, and Lady Neville-Jones, the security minister, give evidence to the joint committee on human rights on extradition policy.
3pm : George Osborne, the chancellor, gives evidence to the Commons Treasury committee about the budget.
3.30pm: Kenneth Clarke, the justice secretary, makes a statement to MPs about his green paper on civil justice.
As usual, I'll be covering all the breaking political news, as well as looking at the papers and bringing you the best politics from the web. I'll post a lunchtime summary at around 1pm, and an afternoon one after Osborne has finished.
Comments