Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
1889-1899)
ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER
JOHN YATES
AND DETECTIVE
CHIEF SUPERINTENDENT
PHILIP WILLIAMS
2 SEPTEMBER 2009
Q1889 Chairman: Can I welcome you to
the second part of this session. When the Guardian published
their first story, you were asked to conduct a review and you
concluded that no new information had been obtained and there
was no reason for you to reopen the investigation. You concluded
that review in a remarkably short space of time. Can you assure
us of how thorough that review was?
Mr Yates: Would it be possible,
Chair, just to make a few opening remarks in the first instance?
Q1890 Chairman: Yes.
Mr Yates: I am grateful for the
opportunity to come here to provide some clarity, I hope, from
a police perspective on a number of issues that have arisen since
the Guardian story was published in July of this year.
I think it is worth emphasising from the outset that the Guardian
article talked about three entirely separate issues both in time
and context. You have heard about Operation Motorman, and the
related crunch investigation, Glade, was our investigation and
there was the civil action in 2007. As I said previously, there
is essentially nothing new in the story other than to place in
the public domain additional material which had already been considered
by both the police investigation into Goodman and Mulcaire and
by the CPS and the prosecution team. There was certainly no new
evidence and, in spite of a huge amount of publicity and our request
of the Guardian and others to submit to us any additional evidence,
nothing has been forthcoming since. You will also be aware as
I think you have had a letter from DPP Keir Starmer who separately
conducted his own review into the prosecution strategy in the
Goodman and Mulcaire case, and for further reassurance he asked
leading counsel, David Perry, to consider whether there was additional
material that ought to have been subject to further investigation,
particularly the Neville email, and he has written to you on 30
July and he makes it quite clear that he neither thought it appropriate
to reopen the case from the prosecution perspective nor, importantly,
to invite the police to reopen our investigation. Just turning
to our investigative strategy in the case, you have had a very
full note from us which I do not intend to go through of course,
but I would just highlight some of the issues in terms of our
investigative strategy in this case. It was based on the premise
of to prosecute the most substantive offence. You have heard from
the previous witness that, based on our advice, section 1 of RIPA,
the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, thus intercepting
or hacking, I will call it, voicemail messages, using that power
was envisaged to be the simplest, most clear method to present
to the court the most cogent evidence and it is of course the
one they had the greatest sentencing powers with, so that was
the principal strategy around that. There was then of course the
technical evidence. We wished to ensure, in order to secure the
confidence and support of victims, that their voicemails would
not be played in court and we wanted to secure technical data,
the best data possible, to ensure that we could prove the case
and not by the revelation of private conversations. Then there
is the case law, and this is rarely used. This was the first prosecution
of its type in terms of voicemail messages, so success was clearly
dependent upon having overwhelming and unambiguous evidence in
this case. There were then numerous technical challenges around
the way that the various phone service providers operate, and
they all operate in a different way, and their basis was not to
provide data which had integrity in terms of evidential process
and they have business reasons around the way they use their data,
so we had to find a way which would get the data out that had
integrity to ensure there could not be found ways round it through
a court process. The victims were the next issue. One of the key
aspects of the case was to ensure we had sufficient victims and
a breadth of victims to reflect the overall criminality in the
case and to ensure that the court had adequate sentencing powers
around those issues, and then there are the suspects. In 2006
and again more recently, we have been invited to say whether there
were more suspects in this case, and I would hate to think that
anyone thought that we were avoiding any aspect around other editors
or other people who may be related to this case. I found a letter
only this morning in terms of these matters where we clearly set
out to the solicitors acting for the News of the
World, and this was in September 2006, a range of issues
that we wanted them to disclose to us, and we finished the letter
by saying, "The investigation is attempting to identify all
persons that may be involved, including fellow conspirators".
One of the bullet points we looked for was: "Who does Mr
Mulcaire work for? Has he completed work for other editors and
journalists at the News of the World?
Can we have a copy of any other records for work completed by
Mulcaire for these editors and journalists, including the subjects
on which you might have provided information?" There was
a very clear strategy set out from the start to ensure that we
covered all those bases if there was evidence in the case. Our
job, as ever, is to follow the evidence and to make considered
decisions based upon our experience which ensures limited resources
are used both wisely and effectively and, supported by senior
counsel, including the DPP, the collective belief is that there
were then and there remain now insufficient grounds or evidence
to arrest or interview anyone else and, as I have said already,
no additional evidence has come to light since. What has been
achieved, lastly? An individual's right to privacy against the
media's right to publish in the public interest will always remain
a matter for debate and they can often clash, but this investigation
into an interception of this nature was the first of its kind
in the UK. The prosecution brought absolute clarity that accessing
people's voicemails without their permission is a criminal offence
for which you will go to prison. In terms of the wider public
protection, it has also served to highlight some of the security
vulnerabilities around the way people use their voicemail and,
with the collaborative approach with the phone companies, there
is now much greater awareness about how people should use the
proper security measures they have within their phones to ensure
that this cannot happen again. I hope that is helpful.
Q1891 Chairman: Yes, that is helpful.
The evidence which the Guardian produced and indeed gave to this
Committee actually came from you originally. It is evidence that
was handed over to the court from the police investigation—
Mr Yates: Yes, it was unused material.
Q1892 Chairman:— which reached
the Guardian. The key one, which you will be familiar with, is
the email and "this is the transcript for Neville".
Why did you not think that it was sufficiently important to interview
Neville?
Mr Yates: Well, again we took
advice on this and it did form part of the original case and formed
part of, what we call, the sensitive, unused material. There are
a number of factors around it, some practical issues. Firstly,
the email itself was dated, I think, 29 July 2005 and we took
possession of it in August 2006, so it was already a minimum of
14 months old, that email, that is the minimum and we do not know
when it was actually compiled or sent. We know from the phone
company records that they are not kept for that period of time,
so there was no data available behind that email. There was nothing
to say that Neville, whoever Neville may be, had seen the document
and, even if the person, Neville, had read the email, that is
not an offence. It is no offence of conspiracy, it is no offence
of phone-hacking, it is no offence of any sort at all.
Q1893 Chairman: Sorry to interrupt,
but you say there is nothing to say whether Neville had read the
email, but you could have asked him.
Mr Yates: Well, if I can finish,
there is no clear evidence as to who Neville was or who is Neville.
It is supposition to suggest Neville Thurlbeck or indeed any other
Neville within the News of the World
or any other Neville in the journalist community. Mulcaire's computers
were seized and examined. There is nothing in relation to Neville
or Neville Thurlbeck in those computers and, supported by counsel
latterly and by the DPP, they both are of the view, as we are,
that there are no reasonable grounds to suspect that Neville has
committed any offence whatsoever and no reasonable grounds to
go and interview him.
Q1894 Chairman: Well, it does seem
an extraordinary coincidence though that somebody working for
the News of the World sends an email,
saying, "This is the transcript for Neville" when the
chief reporter of the News of the World
is called Neville and you think that this is not sufficient to
ask Neville Thurlbeck whether he is the Neville referred to in
the email.
Mr Yates: Well, there is no evidence
of an offence being committed, which is what I said first. There
is no evidence. Reading that document is no evidence of an offence.
There is no evidence that there are any other links between Neville,
whoever he may be, and Mulcaire. As I say, we looked at his computers,
so it is not as if we ignored this, but we looked at all of his
computers, looked for the links in terms of any contact and there
is no contact. As I say, both our view and the advice of leading
counsel and the CPS was that there were insufficient grounds to
certainly arrest or question; it would not take us any further.
Q1895 Chairman: The judge in the
trial actually states that Glenn Mulcaire was working for others
in the News of the World besides Clive
Goodman.
Mr Yates: Yes.
Q1896 Chairman: But, despite the
fact that that was the clear conclusion of the court, you—
Mr Yates: It is not quite like
that. He said "worked with others". Well, of course
he worked with others because that is his job. He is a private
investigator and he works with journalists. He is going to be
working with a number of other people.
Q1897 Chairman: Let me give you an
example. You knew that Mulcaire was illegally accessing the phone
messages of a number of other individuals besides the people working
in the Royal Household. Did you not seek to establish who on the
News of the World might have been
commissioning those intercepts?
Mr Yates: Well, we sought the
information that I have read out of the letter which I can probably
redact with sense and give to the Committee to see, so we did
seek those issues from them and they said that there was no information
there. Now, to go further, we have got to have very strong grounds
to further suggest that they are misleading us and there were
no grounds on that. With all investigations, you have to set parameters
as to what you are trying to prove and as to what is the proper
use of resources to prove that. You would be the first to criticise
us if we went off fishing somewhere because it seemed like a good
idea, but we have got to actually have evidence to follow and
to go through, so we are limited. There was a prosecution strategy,
it was not just a police strategy, it was a prosecution team strategy,
which said, "These are the eight people we're going to concentrate
on. That reflects the full extent of the criminality and that
gives the court the greatest sentencing powers if there is a plea
of guilty or if they are found guilty", and that is the way
the decisions were taken in 2006.
Q1898 Chairman: One of the reasons
given by the DPP to us is that, in order to prove a criminal offence,
you have to demonstrate that the phone message was intercepted
and listened to before the intended recipient had himself opened
and listened to it, and that was the criminal act. That is correct?
Mr Yates: Yes, the analogy is
the envelope and the opened letter. It is not an offence to read
the opened letter, but it is an offence to open the letter and
read it, and that is the analogy.
Q1899 Chairman: However, let us say
that somebody is accessing my voice messages and, therefore, if
they get to that voice message before I have got round to listening
to it, they are committing a criminal offence?
Mr Yates: Yes.
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