Two former Lib Dem cabinet ministers and a former party whip are suing the publisher of the Sun and the defunct News of the World, claiming that their phones were hacked for stories or to “exert political influence”, including when Rupert Murdoch was seeking approval for a takeover of BSkyB.
Journalists working at Murdoch’s newspapers are said to have unlawfully targeted the former business secretary Vince Cable as well as Chris Huhne, a former energy and climate change secretary, and Norman Lamb, a whip and sometime adviser to the then deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg.
The purpose of the attempts to access the men’s voicemail messages during their time in coalition with the Conservatives and to carry out other “unlawful information gathering” had been to source stories about them in order to “sell newspapers”, but to also influence political events, according to the claims lodged at the high court, which have been denied.
In the first period of the coalition government, Murdoch’s News Corp wanted to buy up the remaining 61% of shares that it did not already own in BSkyB for £7.8bn.
Cable, as business secretary, was to be the ultimate arbiter, but he was removed from his position by the then prime minister, David Cameron, after the BBC’s Robert Peston was leaked a tape in which he had told a constituent that he had “declared war” on Murdoch and expected to win.
According to Cable’s particulars of claim, the source of the tape to the BBC was Will Lewis, a former editor at the Daily Telegraph. That newspaper was the first to report some aspects of the recording, though not the comments about Murdoch.
At the time of the leak to the BBC, Lewis had moved on from the Telegraph to become general manager at News International, the previous name of News UK, owner of Murdoch’s newspapers’ publisher, News Group Newspapers.
It is claimed that Murdoch’s tabloid newspapers targeted Cable “in about December 2010 by unlawfully obtaining the covert recordings of his private conversations in his constituency surgery by improper payments or inducements to Jim Robinson (who soon afterwards was given a senior role at News International), an employee of the Daily Telegraph IT department, and/or by other unlawful means by Will Lewis, the general manager of News International, who released them to the BBC causing them to be published”.
Lewis declined to comment on the allegations.
In further support of Cable’s allegations, the particulars of claim say the former cabinet minister will rely on a series of calls to his mobile in June 2010, when News Corp’s intention to buy the shares was announced, and then the day after the company had asked the EU to approve its proposed takeover in December that year.
Cable claims that between 27 July 2004 and 31 December 2011, a total of 383 calls were made by journalists at the Wapping headquarters of the Sun and News of the World, “the overwhelming majority of which he will infer were made for the purposes of unlawfully intercepting his voicemail messages”.
Huhne, who was jailed in 2013 for perverting the course of justice over an arrangement in which his wife took speeding points for him, claims that he was also targeted at the time of the attempted BSkyB takeover and that there was “an attempt to intimidate him and as part of a fishing expedition designed to discredit him”.
He claims an investigation had been launched by journalists at Murdoch’s newspapers into his extramarital relationship with an aide, Carina Trimingham, in May 2009, but that editors “did not consider the story worth publication” at that time.
It is contended that the investigation was repeated and a story was published after he had called for the police to continue their inquiries into the News of the World some years after the initial convictions in 2007 of one of its journalists and a private investigator.
Huhne’s particulars of claim cite an email in September 2010 from Fred Michel, a vice-president for government and public affairs at News Corp, to Rebekah Brooks, the then chief executive of News International, who is now chief executive of News UK, in which he wrote: “The key will be for prominent Lib Dems like Clegg and Huhne to stay silent on it [and I think they will].”
Huhne further claims that the hacking of his voicemails had an “untold negative impact” on his political career, citing his narrow loss to Clegg for the leadership of the party in 2015.
It is claimed that he was suspected of running a dirty campaign against Simon Hughes in a previous leadership campaign. Hughes and his supporters are said to have suspected him of being behind his rival being outed as gay by News Group newspapers, on the subject of which voicemails had been left on Huhne’s phone. Hughes backed Clegg in 2007, and he subsequently defeated Huhne by a small margin.
In a statement to the Guardian, Huhne said he believed phone hacking was a tool not just for “tabloid titillation, but also to find kompromat to get rid of pesky politicians and also to indulge in corporate espionage to further Murdoch’s interests”.
The particulars of claim for Lamb, who was Clegg’s chief political adviser in the early years of the coalition government before becoming a government whip, allege that there were five calls to his phone in June 2010 around the time he met Michel when he first told him of News Corps’ intention to buy the BSkyB shares.
There were also five calls around the time of a second meeting with Michel, during which it is claimed “threats were made by Mr Michel regarding to the potential impact on coverage of the Liberal Democrats by News International should an adverse decision be made in respect of the News Corporation BSkyB bid”.
A spokesperson for News UK declined to comment.
