News International chief clarifies 2003 statement that 'we have paid the police for information in the past'

The former Sun editor, Rebekah Brooks, told a powerful group of MPs on Monday she has no knowledge of any actual payments the paper might have made to police officers in exchange for information.

In a letter to the chairman of the Commons home affairs select committee, Brooks, who is now chief executive of the paper's parent company News International, said she had no "knowledge of any specific cases" in which payments to police might have been made.

Brooks was responding to a request from the committee made last month to detail how many police officers received money from the Sun, which she edited from 2003 to 2009, and when the practice ceased.

Brooks, who edited the Sun's sister title the News of the World before moving to the daily in early 2003, told MPs on the culture, media and sport select committee eight years ago:"We have paid the police for information in the past."

In her letter to the home affairs select committee chairman, Labour MP Keith Vaz, Brooks said she was grateful for the opportunity to clarify the evidence she gave in March 2003.

She added that she was talking in general terms about the newspaper industry and its relationship with the police, rather than the paper she edited specifically, when she appeared before the culture media and sport committee in 2003.

"As can be seen from the transcript, I was responding to a specific line of questioning on how newspapers get information," Brooks wrote. "My intention was simply to comment generally on the widely-held belief that payments had been made in the past to police officers.

"If, in doing so, I gave the impression that I had knowledge of any specific cases, I can assure you that this was not my intention."

According to the transcript of 11 March 2003 on the culture select committee website, Labour MP Chris Bryant asked both Brooks and Andy Coulson, then editor of the News of the World, whether "either of your newspapers ever use private detectives, ever bug or pay the police?".

A long answer from Brooks followed about the use of private detectives and listening devices in the public interest, in which she gave a specific example of where a News of the World reporter recorded a conversation to establish that a woman was "selling her daughters" to local "paedophiles", but which did not address the question of whether the police had been paid for news stories.

Bryant then followed up, asking specifically: "And on the element of whether you ever pay the police for information?"

Brooks replied: "We have paid the police for information in the past." Bryant then asked her "will you do it in the future?", to which she answered: "It depends."

At that point Coulson cut in, saying: "We operate within the code and within the law and if there is a clear public interest then we will. The same holds for private detectives, subterfuge, a video bag – whatever you want to talk about."

Vaz wrote to Brooks at the end of last month following evidence given to the home affairs select committee in March by John Yates, the acting deputy commissioner of the Metropolitan police, in which he said Scotland Yard was undertaking "research" on whether police officers had received payments from newspapers.

The Labour MP for Leicester East also wrote to Yates in March on behalf of the home affairs select committee asking for more details about this research.

In the same evidence session Yates reiterated his claim that the Crown Prosecution Service had initially advised the Met to adopt a narrow interpretation of the law relating to phone hacking during its initial investigation into allegations of widespread hacking at the News of the World.

He said that advice "permeated the whole investigation/inquiry" and helped explain why the police had only identified a small number of victims.

The committee has asked Yates to supply a copy of the legal advice the Met received from the CPS when Yates reviewed the hacking evidence last autumn.

Yates said its advice changed after a case conference held in October 2010, during which the CPS made it clear that a wider definition of what constitutes a hacking offence should be adopted.

MPs have asked for copies of the legal advice supplied before and after that October meeting. A spokeswoman for Vaz said he had received a reply from Yates and the committee is likely to make it public in due course.

The Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer, contradicted Yates's claims about the CPS advice when he appeared before the home affairs committee earlier this month.

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