Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
1580-1599)
MR ANDY
COULSON AND
MR STUART
KUTTNER
21 JULY 2009
Q1580 Philip Davies: Could you tell
us who can because when I asked Mr Crone the same question he
seemed to think that you were the person to ask.
Mr Kuttner: Well, in which case
that is simply not so.
Q1581 Philip Davies: I am asking
the question as to who would know if a payment had been made for
any particular reason to Mr Mulcaire or Mr Goodman since they
were convicted. Mr Crone said he did not know and could not be
expected to know. You seem to be saying that you do not know.
Who at News International would know?
Mr Kuttner: There is no point
in me speculating on what I do not know. What I do know is some
kind of agreements or arrangements were made, I think individually,
in fact I am sure individually, with both persons. As to who would
know I can make enquiries about that.
Q1582 Philip Davies: So you have
no idea who would know at the moment? Whether payments have been
made to one of your journalists and his accomplice who have been
convicted and sent to prison, you are trying to tell me that you
have no idea who in News International might or might not know
that?
Mr Kuttner: No, I did not say
anything of the sort. I said I do not know and I can make enquiries
about it.
Q1583 Philip Davies: So you do not
know who at News International would authorise that payment? You
must know who would authorise such payments, surely?
Mr Kuttner: Mr Davies, it is quite
a large company and I have given the answer I have given.
Q1584 Philip Davies: But you will
find out who has?
Mr Kuttner: I said that I can
make enquiries.
Q1585 Philip Davies: Mr Coulson,
perhaps we might get somewhere with you because we are clearly
getting nowhere with Mr Kuttner. Am I right in thinking from your
opening statement that you said that you were aware of the £100,000
a year payment to Mr Mulcaire's company but you just had no idea
about the activities that he was indulging in?
Mr Coulson: The £100,000
was for a legitimate contract. I think the Committee has discussed
that before as to what Mr Mulcaire did for that £100,000.
Separately, the cash arrangements with Clive Goodman I knew nothing
about.
Q1586 Philip Davies: That is fine.
I think you behaved honourably in the sense that you resigned,
which is perhaps a lesson that many politicians could learn when
things go wrong on their watch.
Mr Coulson: It is not for me to
say.
Q1587 Philip Davies: You said again
today that you were not and could not be aware of the activities
of a rogue reporter.
Mr Coulson: Yes.
Q1588 Philip Davies: Would you now
accept given what has subsequently been in the Guardian
and the evidence that they have produced that the likelihood is
that Mr Goodman was not actually a rogue maverick reporter at
the News of the World and there was actually more of a
systemic culture at the News of the World about these activities?
Mr Coulson: No, I would not accept
that.
Q1589 Philip Davies: So you think
that it is perfectly reasonable to presume that because phone
tapping was taking place of people like Gordon Taylor and Elle
Macpherson, who had nothing at all in any way as far as I can
see to do with the Royal Family, and that Clive Goodman was the
Royal Editor, that that must have been down to Clive Goodman's
activities?
Mr Coulson: As far as I am aware
there is no evidence linking the non-Royal phone hacking allegations
that were made against Glenn Mulcaire to any member of the News
of the World staff.
Q1590 Philip Davies: So you do not
think the suspicion arises even?
Mr Coulson: There is no evidence.
Q1591 Philip Davies: What about the
emails that were sent by other reporters on the News of the
World that we heard about earlier?
Mr Coulson: I will try and be
as helpful as I possibly can be today but I will say this about
the documentation that the Guardian produced: I have never
seen any of it before. As I said in my opening statement, I have
no recollection of a Gordon Taylor story. I heard Mr Crone's evidence
earlier that mentioned that it may have come up in a conversation.
I have absolutely no recollection. I am not suggesting that Tom
is wrong about that, by the way, but I have no recollection of
it. Dozens of stories come through the News of the World
in a given week. Some weeks more than dozens. I can tell you that
I never asked for a Gordon Taylor story, I never commissioned
a Gordon Taylor story, I never read a Gordon Taylor story, to
the best of my recollection, and, as you will know, we did not
publish a Gordon Taylor story. I would add this: Gordon Taylor,
with all respect to him, is not exactly a household name, so he
may have appeared in the sports pages of the News of the World
from time to time but I certainly would not have been interested
in a story on him or about him at the front end of the newspaper.
Q1592 Philip Davies: So you do not
think therefore that the chances are that perhaps somebody who
works on the sports pages might have also been involved in this
activity?
Mr Coulson: You are now hypothesising
about the allegations stretching through every aspect of the News
of the World. Forgive me but where is the evidence that even
the other people involved in the Mulcaire charges were linked
to the News of the World? Where is the evidence for it?
Q1593 Chairman: We do have the copy
of the contract which was signed by the Assistant Editor of the
News of the World to employ Paul Williams (in other words
Glenn Mulcaire) to find a story about Gordon Taylor, so clearly
it was not just Clive Goodman.
Mr Coulson: The first time I saw
that document was when the Guardian produced it. I have
no knowledge of it whatsoever.
Q1594 Chairman: So whilst Greg Miskiw
would have signed that contract he had not talked to you about
it?
Mr Coulson: No, Greg Miskiw was
based in Manchester. He did not talk to me about it in any way.
Q1595 Janet Anderson: Mr Kuttner,
you are the Managing Editor. I wonder if you could perhaps give
us a job description. What does being Managing Editor involve
and can you set out for us what exactly is the chain of command
for authorising payments? When would you have been involved in
making payments and when would you not?
Mr Kuttner: Okay, a two-part question,
can I try and condense the answer to the first part. I will not
say a jack-of-all-trades but a managing editor on a newspaper
can do all sorts of things. In my particular case, as I said at
the outset, I have made contributions to the paper in terms of
articles. Occasionally I would negotiate with publishers for the
rights to books. I would help with the writing of the editorial
column, the leader column. I would deal with disciplinary matters
involving staff. I guess it is a separate matter but I sat and
I do still as a trustee of the pension fund. I was actively involved
in the creation of the newspaper's annual budget and the division
of that budget between different departments such as news and
features and sport and pictures and so forth. I liaised closely
with the heads of those departments as to their weekly and monthly
spending patterns and to some substantial extent I or a colleague
(though more often myself) would sign off or approve, or in some
cases disapprove, journalists' expenses claims or challenge them,
and finally, although I may have left something out of that litany,
I would approve payments, by far the bulk of them being payments
by cheque or by bank transfer or what are called retainer payments,
regular payments to columnists, and occasionally (occasionally
in the sense of not a great quantity) oversee cash payments.
Q1596 Janet Anderson: You said earlier
that you were not aware of a continuing contract with Goodman
and Mulcaire.
Mr Coulson: Forgive me, which
contract are you speaking of?
Q1597 Janet Anderson: Well, you said
you were not aware of details of any payments subsequent to their
conviction?
Mr Kuttner: Of the payments in
relation to the annual contract?
Q1598 Janet Anderson: Yes?
Mr Kuttner: I was aware of that.
If I gave that impression I am surprised because I was perfectly
well aware of that.
Q1599 Janet Anderson: Could you explain
for us the chain of command when it comes to authorising payments
by the News of the World from the bottom to the top.
Mr Kuttner: Okay, let us take
a for instance. A news reporter gets to hear of a possible story
and in that case there may be a demand from an informant or from
a freelance agency for a payment. That journalist will speak to
the department head, who could be the features editor or the deputy
features editor, and agree a sum payable on publication of the
story, and then in due course, either on a screen or in paper,
the documentation for that story would come to me. I would check
it against what had been reported previously, so if a features
editor had said to me, "Look story X will cost £3,000
for example," and along comes a payment for £3,000,
that is fine. If along comes a payment for £4,000 that is
not fine, and that is batted back.
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