Prescott launches fresh legal plea in phone-hacking case

He and three others – Labour MP Chris Bryant, former Scotland Yard deputy assistant commissioner Brian Paddick and journalist Brendan Montague – yesterday asked a High Court judge to give them the go-ahead for a judicial review.

The four, who believe they were victims of phone-hacking, claim there were human rights breaches in the police handling of their cases and are applying for permission to bring judicial proceedings against the Metropolitan Police Commissioner.

Yesterday’s proceedings before Mr Justice Foskett in London followed an earlier rejection of their applications by another High Court judge, who ruled the legal challenge “unarguable”.

Mr Justice Mitting decided in February there was no arguable case that Article Eight of the European Convention on Human Rights imposed an obligation on the Met to notify the claimants in 2005-2006 that they might have been the victims of unlawful phone-hacking.

He also concluded that it was not arguable that the commissioner was under a duty to conduct an investigation into the possibility that mobile communications had been unlawfully intercepted.

At the hearing yesterday, Hugh Tomlinson QC told Mr Justice Foskett the renewed applications concerned the “lawfulness” of the way the police dealt with the phone-hacking case in 2006 “when police officers became aware of what was going on”.

He said they were seeking declarations in relation to claims that the police “failed to inform them they were victims”, failed to respond adequately to their requests for information and failed to carry out an effective investigation at the time.

Mr Tomlinson told the judge: “The claimants are seeking declaratory relief in relation to past breaches of their rights. It is not academic for the court to indicate to the commissioner that his previous conduct was unlawful. It is an essential part of the court’s function.”

The judge reserved his decision to a date to be announced.