Dial M for Murdoch: News Corporation and the Corruption of Britain by Tom Watson Page A

critics, and lied to the public, media and Parliament.
    The first pressing problem was how to minimize the impending prosecution of Clive Goodman. According to Lawrence Abramson, a senior lawyer at Harbottle & Co, which later worked for News International, internal emails at Wapping in 2006 ‘revealed quite an active involvement’ in Clive Goodman’s prosecution: ‘They showed [the company] trying to influence the way the prosecution was being conducted or the defence was being conducted.’ 13
    Naturally News International did not want its royal editor to suggest that phone hacking was rife at the News of the World, nor that he had only been doing what was expected of him. To demonstrate to Goodman that he was still valued, despite the shame he had brought, Tom Crone relayed to him Andy Coulson’s repeated assurance that he could come back to the News of the World once he had served his sentence. News International continued to pay Goodman’s full salary while he stayed at home, and even called him occasionally for help on royal stories. It also continued to pay Glenn Mulcaire his full salary.
    While the Crown Prosecution Service put together the limited case against Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire, News International had become concerned about an attack from another direction – the campaign by the Information Commissioner, Richard Thomas, to introduce a prison term for breaches of the Data Protection Act. On 24 July 2006, the Department for Constitutional Affairs issued a consultation paper agreeing with his proposal. In an attempt to lobby support for it, on 27 October Thomas met the chairman of the Press Complaints Commission’s powerful Code Committee, which set its code of conduct and who happened to be Les Hinton, News International’s executive chairman and one of Rupert Murdoch’s closest allies. Since joining the News in Adelaide as a copy boy in 1960, Hinton had worked his way up to head Murdoch’s British newspapers, where he had stewarded the promotions of Rebekah Wade and Andy Coulson. Although NI was implacably opposed to jail terms, Thomas said the meeting was ‘civilized and reasonably constructive’ and that Hinton ‘talked a lot about the efforts which would be made to tackle misconduct’. 14 Thomas was extremely surprised a few days later to see a ‘personalized and hostile leading editorial’ on him and the ICO in The Sunday Times on 29 October 2011:
     
Where someone lives, who they are, who their friends and family may be is hardly confidential information. It is common currency that is easily discovered by talking to neighbours, looking at the electoral register or searching the Land Registry, as anyone is entitled to do. To propose imprisonment for reporters – and insurers, solicitors and private investigators – who obtain such deals would be laughable, if it were not so sinister.
     
     
    A further hostile leader appeared in The Times three days later, on 1 November:
     
It [the proposal] could all too easily prevent investigative journalists looking at personal data in pursuit of a public-interest story; deter whistleblowers from revealing malpractice; and blow wide open the confidentiality that protects the journalist and his source.
     
     
    Thomas told the Leveson Inquiry: ‘At that time, nothing else was appearing in the mainstream press about ‘What Price Privacy? ’ to prompt these attacks. The episode raised questions in my mind about proprietorial influence on editorial independence and freedom.’ *
    At a pleas hearing at the Old Bailey in London in November 2006, the limited nature of the prosecution of Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire became apparent. Under the Criminal Law Act 1977, the men pleaded guilty to conspiracy to intercept the communications of the royal aides Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton, Helen Asprey and Paddy Harverson. In the eight months leading up to their arrests, they had made 609 calls to the direct dial inboxes of the trio (Goodman making the most,