The former deputy prime minister is seeking permission for a judicial review into police handling of the phone-hacking affair

This article is more than 9 years old

This article is more than 9 years old

The private investigator at the centre of the phone-hacking affair intercepted 45 voicemail messages from the then deputy prime minister John Prescott and emailed them to the News of the World, the high court has heard.

Lord Prescott's lawyers told the court that he had been the victim of "an unfortunate history of misinformation" by the Metropolitan police, who had told him repeatedly that he was not a victim of hacking.

But the court heard that the investigator Glenn Mulcaire had targeted Prescott by listening to messages which he left on the phone of his chief of staff, Joan Hammell.

Mulcaire had then sent a News of the World executive an email containing 45 messages as well as instructions about how to continue accessing Hammell's phone.

The new evidence emerged in a hearing in which Prescott, the former Europe minister Chris Bryant and the Met's former deputy assistant commissioner Brian Paddick are seeking permission for a judicial review of police handling of the affair.

They say police failed to conduct an effective inquiry and failed to inform them they were victims.

Lawyers for the Met conceded there had been "some operational shortcomings" and that there had been cases where some victims had not been informed even though the evidence was clear.

But they said the evidence in the claimants' cases had not been clear. They revealed that, having seized 10,000 pages of notes from Mulcaire, the original inquiry in 2006 had failed to enter the material on a computer system.

In 2009, after the Guardian revived the affair, Scotland Yard had finally started transferring the material to a database but had overlooked numerous documents and scanned others in a form that was not searchable.

The result for the police, according to James Lewis QC, was that:

• Prescott was told there was no evidence that he was a target of Mulcaire, even though his name was listed on notes the investigator had kept about the hacking of Hammell.

• Bryant was told only that his name and number had been found in Mulcaire's notes, whereas in fact his name was linked to a list of 23 phone numbers that could only have been obtained by hacking his voicemail, according to Hugh Tomlinson QC.

• Paddick was told there was no evidence he was a victim even though a print-out from Mulcaire's computer named him as "a project" and handwritten notes included phone details for him, his partner, his former partner and numerous associates.

The court heard that the email containing Prescott's 45 messages had been handed to police by the News of the World in January this year.

Mr Justice Foskett said he would deliver a judgment as to whether the judicial review should continue in the near future.