Mr Bryant claimed the standards committee, which has provided the Metropolitan Police with millions of emails and other documents relating to phone-hacking and allegedly corrupt payments, had stopped co-operating in May. He said: “The lack of MSC co-operation with the Met since May of this year smacks of the plimsoll strategy where as soon as the water started lapping a little bit higher, chuck somebody overboard - a newspaper, an editor. They provided the material about some of their journalists as long as they made sure that the ship still floated and the proprietor’s feet didn’t get wet.