Andy Coulson sues News Group Newspapers over refusal to pay his legal fees

The 43-year-old took News International subsidiary News Group Newspapers (NGN) to the High Court yesterday over the construction of a clause within the severance agreement entered into when he resigned from the paper in February 2007.

Mr Coulson, David Cameron’s former Director of Communications at Downing Street, was arrested in July and released on bail. The position of NGN is understood to be that, whatever the clause meant, it did not cover criminal allegations.

His counsel, James Laddie, asked Mr Justice Supperstone for a declaration that NGN, which stopped reimbursement in August, “must pay the professional costs and expenses properly incurred” by Mr Coulson “in defending allegations of criminal conduct” during his editorship.

He said that NGN’s construction of the clause was offensive to a fundamental principle of English criminal law – that a man was innocent until proven guilty.

Christopher Jeans QC, for NGN, said that the clause covered the “occupational hazards of being an editor” and not alleged criminal activity. The judge reserved his decision to a later date.

The news came as Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator previously employed by the News of the World, was arrested over allegations of phone hacking and perverting the course of justice.

The 41-year-old was being held by Operation Weeting detectives after officers swooped on his Surrey home at dawn yesterday.

Mulcaire, from Sutton, ran Nine Consultancy, a firm offering to protect clients from media intrusion, before landing work with the now axed Sunday tabloid.

He is the 18th hacking-related arrest since the fresh investigation was launched. The scandal led to the closure of the News of the World after 168 years, prompted a major public inquiry, and forced the resignation of Metropolitan Police commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson and assistant commissioner John Yates.

Some 1,800 people claim that they may have been hacked.