By Ned Simons - 27th January 2011
The unfolding phone hacking scandal is a "conspiracy against the public" equal to Watergate, the former chairman of the Conservative Party Lord Fowler has said.
Speaking in the House of Lords this morning Lord Fowler, a former chair of the communications committee, called on the government to initiate a full scale inquiry into the extend of phone hacking in the media.
"Does he remember the Watergate scandal, in which one brave newspaper protected the public interest?" he asked Lib Dem whip Lord Wallace of Saltaire.
"Has not exactly the opposite happened in the phone hacking scandal, in which one newspaper—and possibly others—has not exposed injustice but instead directly conspired against the public?
"Does he agree that after any further criminal proceedings there will be a need for a full-scale inquiry to ascertain what happened and how the public can be protected?"
Lord Wallace said the revelations about phone hacking at the News of the World had left journalism facing a crisis as serious as the one that befell MPs as a result of the expenses scandal.
He told peers the press needed to "act up to its responsibilities" as it was very clear "many of its members had failed to do".
"I think that we all understand that the press as a whole now faces a crisis of trust that is at least as great as the crisis of trust in politics," he said.
On Wednesday the police launched a new probe into the allegations of phone hacking by journalists at the News of the World after receiving "significant new information" and have promised it will be a "robust investigation" following criticism of the initial inquiry.
The new information is believed to be relate to emails sent by the tabloid's assistant editor (news) Ian Edmondson, who was sacked by the paper on Tuesday following an internal investigation.
Downing Street communications director Andy Coulson resigned his post last week amid growing pressure of the actions of journalists at the paper when he was editor.
It also emerged today that shadow Olympics minister Tessa Jowell may also have been a victim of phone hacking after she said her phone provider warned her an attempt had been made to access her voicemail.
Labour peer Lord Prescott, who has been a harsh critic of Scotland Yard's handling of the case, said it was "unacceptable" that the police, newspaper editors, the Press Complaints Commission and the Crown Prosecution Service had all come to the conclusion the phone hacking was the actions of a single "rogue operator" given the new information.
And fellow Labour peer Lord Soley said there was an "underlying problem" within the culture of journalism.
"This started with fishing expeditions to see whether any interesting stories could be pulled up," he said.
"But these expeditions are also carried out in other ways, as was the case in the incident concerning Vince Cable MP.
"Bizarrely, the editor of that newspaper then tried to hush up the story because it was not its policy to draw attention to Rupert Murdoch’s takeover of BSkyB.
"Will a major effort be made at some stage to get journalism to recognise that it has a cultural problem here, which the PCC is not addressing in the way that it should?"
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