Tom Newton Dunn said to be unaware of intervention which led to arrest of officer on suspicion of leaking information to paper

Police investigating the Plebgate saga obtained the telephone records of the political editor of the Sun without his consent, despite laws which entitle journalists to keep their sources confidential.

The Metropolitan police report into the scandal reveals that the force arrested an officer on suspicion of leaking information to the Sun after an analysis of Tom Newton Dunn’s phone records.

The Met also obtained call records to the Sun newsdesk to try to identify a second potential source to the Plebgate scandal.

The National Union of Journalists described the police move as an “outrageous abuse” of their position that needed “urgent addressing”.

The Sun confirmed that neither Newton Dunn nor the paper knew anything about the intervention of the police, until the report was published on Monday. They have concluded that the police obtained the records from phone companies.

A spokesman for the Sun said the company was “surprised and concerned to learn of this intrusion which we understand was authorised by a police officer rather than a judge for the apparent purpose of exposing a whistleblower who was ultimately shown to have committed no criminal offence”.

He added that the paper understood that this was done by using police powers under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa) which circumvents a different law under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (Pace) that requires police to go to a judge to get disclosure of journalistic material.

A spokesman for the Met confirmed it had used Ripa rather than Pace laws to seize the phone records. “In order to obtain such an authority under Ripa, officers must demonstrate that it is proportionate, legal and necessary,” he said.

The Sun said it would ask Sir Anthony May, the interception of communications commissioner, to examine how many times the police had sought authorisation for journalistic records this way.

The Sun became a target of investigating officers after it published a front page story on 21 September 2012 which claimed that the then Tory chief whip, Andrew Mitchell, had an altercation with officers after they refused to let him cycle out of the main gate at Downing Street.

The Met report revealed that three officers were sacked over their involvement in the incident and its aftermath.

Sources in the Sun newsroom said Newton Dunn was disgusted and outraged to learn the police had seized his phone records. “The first we knew of it was yesterday, we are taking legal advice,” said the source on Tuesday. “We would never have known unless the Met report came out.”

Another said: “This is unbelievable. It’s like the secret police going round checking journalists’ phones. If they have done this, the bigger question is how often have they done this?”

Dunn made a prepared statement to the police in relation to this report but refused to reveal his source. The report reveals he was threatened with arrest for aiding and abetting misconduct in public office.

He told police in his statement that he felt he was justified in exposing the incident.

“In my opinion, this was an example of good faith whistle-blowing about misconduct by a senior politician which was rightfully exposed publicly,” he said in his statement, according to the Met report. Mitchell has brought a libel action against the Sun in relation to the article, which the paper is defending.

The revelation that police obtained his records has alarmed lawyers who work for media organisations that are regularly in court defending journalistic privilege.

“If police are seeking journalistic material, including information about confidential sources, they should use the procedures laid down by the Police and Criminal Evidence Act which provide article 10 compliant safeguards to ensure that sources are properly protected. It is alarming that in this case the police appear to have used other powers which do not have those safeguards and are not intended for use in these circumstances,” said Keith Mathieson, partner at law firm Reynolds Porter Chamberlain.

The Sun’s phone provider, Vodafone, said it had no discretion to resist a Ripa request from the police.

Under Pace, police are required to go to court to ask a judge’s permission to get records belonging to a journalist. Journalists are then notified to enable them to attend court to formally resist disclosure to a third party. On this occasion this did not happen.

One lawyer, who acts for media organisations but who preferred not to be named, said the police have started to use Ripa, which allows a superintendent or police officer above that rank to authorise the production of telephone records from phone companies.

“If they seized all the phone records of Newton Dunn, it would be a way of identifying his source because they have all the mobile numbers of the police and they can just do a line-by-line cross-check,” the lawyer said.

Michelle Stanistreet, NUJ general secretary, said: “Instances like this amount to the outrageous criminalisation of sources who have taken the decision that information they are in receipt of deserves to come to the attention of the public.

“If whistleblowers believe that material they pass to journalists can be accessed in this way – without even the journalists and newspaper knowing about it – they will understandably think twice about making that call.

“The Met’s actions here have been to pursue witchhunts of their own staff, with clearly not a jot of interest in the wider damage they are causing to public trust in journalism. It is an outrageous abuse of their position which needs urgent addressing.”

The Met report into Operation Alice does not give a detailed explanation of how Newton Dunn’s phone records were seized, but they reveal that PC James Glanville was arrested as a direct result.

“On Thursday, 31 January 2013, PC James Glanville was arrested on suspicion of committing the offences of misconduct in a public office and perverting the course of justice. His arrest came about as the result of the initial analysis of the mobile telephone records from the Sun political editor, Mr Tom Newton Dunn, which showed a series of contacts by text and voice calls between the two over several days,” says the report.

The report goes on to detail “extensive contact with Tom Newton Dunn by text and voice calls between 12.45pm and 10.32pm” on 20 September 2012. It says there were six voice calls and 10 text messages between the two over a three-day period.

Glanville was arrested on suspicion of passing information about the incident to the Sun. No criminal charges were brought but he was sacked from his job in February.

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