Prescott ‘finally gets justice’ over phone hacking

Following a crucial High Court hearing in London yesterday, a spokesman for the Met said it now “accepts more should have been done by police in relation to those identified as victims and potential victims of phone hacking”.

Lawyers acting for former Hull MP Lord Prescott and four other victims including Labour MP Chris Bryant, ex-Met Police deputy assistant commissioner Brian Paddick and the personal assistant of actor Jude Law said the force accepted it had “breached a legal obligation” to warn victims.

Law firm Bindmans said the Met formally admitted “that its failure in 2006 and 2007 to warn victims and potential victims of phone-hacking was unlawful”.

Lord Prescott, who attended the proceedings, said: “It’s taken me 19 months to finally get justice.

“Time and time again I was told by the Metropolitan Police that I had not been targeted by Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World.

“But I refused to accept this was the case. Thanks to this judicial review, the Metropolitan Police has finally apologised for its failure to inform victims of the criminal acts committed by the News of the World against myself and hundreds of other victims.”

The development came as the editor of The Sun conceded he could not be 100 per cent sure that some showbusiness stories published in the tabloid had not been obtained by phone hacking.

Dominic Mohan, who was recalled to the Leveson Inquiry to give further evidence yesterday, was questioned over a series of celebrity stories dating from a number of years ago.

Among them were an article about Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher and his then-wife Patsy Kensit, and another about EastEnders star Martine McCutcheon.

Asked whether these stories might have been obtained by hacking, Mr Mohan replied: “Look, I can’t say 100 per cent – and there’s an investigation being conducted by the Management Standards Committee at News International, as you well know.”

Earlier in the day, the editor of The Times apologised before the inquiry to a detective unmasked by a former reporter of the newspaper who allegedly hacked his email. James Harding told the Leveson Inquiry he “sorely” regretted the intrusion, and that he expected “better of The Times”.

Scotland Yard detectives are investigating claims that the Times journalist, named as Patrick Foster, accessed the email of Lancashire detective Richard Horton in 2009, to unmask him as the author of the anonymous NightJack blog.