Supplementary written evidence submitted
by Mr John Yates, Assistant Commissioner, Metropolitan Police
Service
I refer to your letter of 4 February 2010. For
the reasons that I have set out below, I hope you will understand
my surprise that you have chosen to write in such strong terms
about these matters before seeking any form of explanation.
At the time of giving evidence to the Committee
in September 2009, I responded as fully as possible to all questions
asked. I was not privy either then or now to the Committee's mindset
or direction but in response to questions, I did share as much
information as I could to assist the Committee in its work. It
would never be my intention to mislead the Committee and I am
most concerned that you consider that to be the case.
The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) have subsequently
answered additional questions posed by the Committee as fully
and comprehensively as possible. We have also received a number
of requests for additional information from third parties. It
was for this very reason that as soon as we had any additional
information, it was supplied to you to ensure our complete openness
and transparency. If these issues had been asked by the Committee
at the time of my evidence session and if the information had
been available, then it would have been quite rightly shared at
that time.
The specific figure supplied in the FOIA request
on 28 January 2010 was not available at the time I came before
your Committee in September 2009. Since that appearance, and in
accordance with my initial press statement, I have been attempting
to ensure that police have taken all proper, reasonable and diligent
steps to inform all those individuals where there is any evidence
or suspicion that they may have been the subject of any form of
interception. This has involved considerable and time consuming
work, in particular the use of an IT process previously unavailable.
Even now we cannot with any certainty answer questions relating
to identifying individuals and whether or not they were a victim
of interception. It was only after some extensive research that
we were able to answer the specific FOIA request regarding pin
code numbers. You will note that we also had to express some caution
about that figure supplied, as it could not be stated with any
certainty how accurate that was.
I will also take the opportunity in this letter
to respond to the recent question from the Committee, which reads
as follows:
"Please provide the number of victims for
whom they have tape and transcript evidence of calls and who were
subsequently not informed of the potential security breach"
It is not possible to determine with any degree
of accuracy, an answer to the question in terms of "victim"
on the recordings because for the majority of tape recordings
there is either no mention of who is calling who or there is only
a part name. Equally, some recordings are not "voicemails"
for example, we believe some are of Mulcaire tape recording his
own conversations.
To assist you with understanding our difficulty,
the material seized as part of the criminal investigation is believed
to include data of individuals that may be family, friends, acquaintances
and/or contacts of Goodman and Mulcaire that have nothing to do
with the offences for which the two men were prosecuted. Given
the nature of their work, both men would have had data about individuals
that was entirely reasonable and legitimate.
Furthermore, whenever a name in whatever context
was identified it was captured and put onto an MPS system. The
name could range from initials, single names right through to
multiple variations and spellings of a host of fore and/or surnames.
To even attempt to discern from the material to what extent this
data refers to distinct individuals or for what purpose would
have required extensive work beyond the scope of the criminal
investigation and would not have been a proportionate use of police
resources.
A similar process would then have had to be
undertaken to link phone numbers and or voicemail messages to
these individuals.
What we can say is that where information exists
to suggest some form of interception of an individual's phone
was or may have been attempted by Goodman and Mulcaire, the MPS
has been diligent and taken all proper steps to ensure those individuals
have been informed.
I trust this sufficiently clarifies the circumstances
that led to you being supplied with this further information and
once you have had the opportunity to consider my response, I would
be grateful if you could perhaps write to me anew with any additional
points or observations you may wish to make.
February 2010
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