Alan Johnson: This scandal, like a British Watergate, is rolling ever closer to the PM himself

Rodney discovers Del Boy cutting down Christmas trees from the back of the church and selling them to the congregation leaving the Carol Service at the front.

Rodney’s remonstration ends with an exasperated plea to his brother to “fink abaht the effix Del – the effix!”. Del looks bemused. “You don’t know what effix are do you Del?” says Rodders. “Yes I do” replies Del Boy “they’re those little model plane kits that you buy in Woolworths.”

Confusing ethics with Airfix may explain what’s been happening at the News of the World.

I was Home Secretary in July 2009 when the Guardian splashed the story about Gordon Taylor receiving a substantial out of court settlement, thus suggesting that the practice of hacking phones wasn’t confined to a single incident by a rogue reporter as News International had always claimed.

On the morning that the story broke, I was on my way to Manchester to address an Association of Chief Police Officers Conference. I therefore had the opportunity to speak face to face with Sir Paul Stephenson the Metropolitan Police Commissioner.

It was our first meeting, necessarily rushed and held in an alcove of the massive conference centre were we could get some privacy. Sir Paul told me that John Yates, the now ex-Assistant Commissioner who had inherited this case from his predecessor, Andy Hayman, would be looking at it again in the light of the Guardian allegation and issuing a statement in due course.

The view of Scotland Yard was made very clear to me. This was the obsession of a single newspaper. No new evidence had been provided. Two men had been imprisoned following the initial Hayman inquiry in 2005/06 and there were better things for the Met to do with their time than to pursue a paper chase which may well be in pursuit of wild geese.

As I told Parliament in the recent emergency debate, the atmospherics at the time supported this stance. No newspaper other than the Guardian carried the story; indeed I can’t remember any coverage in the broadcast media.

I considered asking Her Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary to conduct an independent enquiry into the way the Met had dealt with this whole issue but the “cons” outweighed the “pros”.

The clinching argument was that the Director of Public Prosecutions was re-examining all the evidence and we should await his report rather than interfere in an operational issue and seriously offend the Metropolitan Police by imposing such an inquiry upon them. There was another factor that played on my mind. Because Andy Coulson was David Cameron’s press secretary, would my actions be perceived as using high office for low political motives?

The judge-led enquiry may well be uncomfortable for me but it’s essential that it looks at the actions of government ministers as well as journalists and the police. It must visit Whitehall as well as Fleet Street and Scotland Yard.

The Met were either evasive, dishonest or lethargic. They could have been all three but I’m still currently in the “lethargic” camp.

We now find that despite all of the events of July 2009, the Metropolitan Police hired Andy Coulson’s deputy at The News of the World, Neil Wallis, at £1,000 a day to advise the Commissioner, his Assistant, John Yates and Dick Fedorcio, the head of press.

This appointment was made while I was Home Secretary and continued under my successor Theresa May. I was not told of this appointment and Theresa May said yesterday that neither was she. Having failed to mention Neil Wallis in her Parliamentary statement, we have yet to learn whether anyone in government was aware of this appointment Employing him in the first place was a catastrophic error or judgment. To continue to employ him as further revelations emerged in the Guardian and indeed the New York Times and as the lighted fuse crackled ever closer to Andy Coulson was incomprehensible.

If the allegations about the News of the World hacking into the phones of family members of the victims of the 7/7 attacks in London are true, and if backhanders were given to members of the Metropolitan Police at the time, the then editor was working for the Prime Minister in 10 Downing Street and his deputy editor was working for the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police in New Scotland Yard at the critical stage of the campaign.

Sir Paul has now resigned, which is a shame because he’s a good policeman for whom I had a high regard. But there was no other honourable course for this honourable man to take. His cryptic comment about David Cameron employing Andy Coulson was further proof that this scandal, equivalent to Watergate in scale and complexity, is rolling ever closer to the Prime Minister himself.

Alan Johnson is Labour MP for Hull West and Hessle and a former Labour Home Secretary