Culture, Media and Sport CommitteeLetter from Louise Mensch MP to the Chair of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee

I write in response to the letter sent to the Committee by Trinity Mirror, in order to correct an error in my questioning during the Committee's evidence session of Tuesday 19 July.

In my questions to Rupert and James Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks, I wrongly stated that Piers Morgan, formerly editor of the Daily Mirror, had been open about personally hacking phones in a book he wrote. This was based on my misreading of an article in the Daily Telegraph published on the 13 July, which covered Mr. Morgan's description in his book of how to hack a phone and how he won the Scoop of the Year on the story of Sven-Goran Eriksson and Ulrika Jonsson. The Telegraph report covers the claim of a blogger that this story was acquired by phone hacking, and I misread that as Mr. Morgan himself claiming this to be true.

Therefore, I must apologise to Mr. Morgan and the Committee for this error about his book. I would have done much better to stick to quoting the figures for the Daily Mirror (and for Associated Newspapers) in “Operation Motorman”, as identified in the report “What Price Privacy Now”. The question for me was always was illegality confined to the News of the World and News International titles, or whether those papers had an air of entitlement in a Fleet Street culture where hacking and blagging was in fact widespread. I welcome the review announced by Trinity Mirror into practises in its newsroom.

29 July 2011