This article is more than 9 years old

This article is more than 9 years old

The "hacked off" campaign, which appears to have enjoyed swift success in calling for a public inquiry into phone hacking, wants to ensure that the inquiry panel's terms of reference are both specific enough and wide enough to get to the bottom of the scandal.

Following its demonstration outside parliament yesterday, it has now released a list of its demands for the judge-led inquiry ahead of today's Commons debate [full disclosure: I am one of the campaign's original supporters]. Here's the list:

Dealing with the News of the World

The inquiry must establish exactly what happened at the paper after 2000. It must therefore probe into the use of illegal or improper methods to obtain information and payments to police officers.

It must also look into the exercise of influence over police, prosecutors and politicians. And then, of course, it must investigate the subsequent cover-up by the paper's owners, News International.

Dealing with the rest of the press

The inquiry must discover the nature and extent of all illegal information gathering methods - including, but not limited to, the interception of voicemails - by national newspapers over the past decade.

One key area is the use of private investigators and the obtaining of personal information about individuals from police officers, especially when induced by payments.

The press and the police

The inquiry has to establish the nature and extent of the contacts between national newspapers and law enforcement agencies.

That means, in particular, contacts with the Metropolitan police, other police forces and the crown prosecution service over the past decade.

It must consider whether such contacts were properly and lawfully conducted in the public interest.

The press and politics

The inquiry will need to establish the nature and extent of the contacts between national newspapers and politicians in relation to press regulation and information gathering.

This part of the inquiry will need to consider specifically the meetings, correspondence or agreements between the government and executives of News International and/or News Corp.

Then there is the matter of media policy issues (cross-media ownership and media regulation) and the extent to which such contacts were proper and transparent and whether undisclosed agreements or understandings existed between ministers and newspapers, or their proprietors, about policies.

The press and parliament

The inquiry must investigate and report on the relationship between national newspapers and their proprietors, and parliament, including allegations that MPs have been threatened over their work into media standards.

This should also involve the nature of extent of the hacking of MPs' and ministers' phones, and – if parliamentary approval is given to this specific term of reference – it must look into the truthfulness of testimony given to parliamentary committees and the refusal of media executives to appear before parliamentary committees.

Conduct of regulators

It must investigate and report on the effectiveness and propriety of the conduct in these matters of the Press Complaints Commission, the office of the information commissioner and the mobile phone companies.

Corporate governance of media corporations

The inquiry must probe the failures of corporate governance in media corporations and any implications of such failures for cross-media ownership and the protection of the public interest in having a diverse media.

Composition of the inquiry and its process

1. It must be led by a judge.

2. The inquiry should include lay panel members, must start without delay and without waiting for the conclusion of the police investigation or any prosecutions. We believe that the judge can navigate any issues as required to avoid prejudicing the criminal process.

3. The inquiry should have the power, after consultation with the law officers, to grant, in appropriate and exceptional cases, immunity from prosecution to witnesses to the inquiry.

4. The inquiry should be required to report within a period of one year after the completion of existing police inquiries.

5. All the material held by the police must be made available to the inquiry.

6. The inquiry should be held in public (except for occasions when privacy is necessary due to pending prosecutions) and the evidence put before the inquiry should be made publicly available without delay (subject, again, to proper protection for privacy and the criminal process).

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Source: Hacked off