Phone hacking: PCC 'was not fully informed during investigation'
Baroness Buscombe makes admission about 2009 probe into News of the World phone-hacking claims
The chair of the Press Complaints Commission, Baroness Peta Buscombe, admitted today that the regulator appeared not to have been fully informed when it carried out its criticised 2009 investigation into claims of phone hacking at the News of the World.
The PCC's report, which concluded in November 2009 that there was "no new evidence" of widespread phone hacking at the News International paper, was condemned at the time by MPs as a "whitewash".
Buscombe today admitted it "sounds now as if we weren't fully informed" about the extent of phone hacking at the paper, where further revelations about its activities led to the dismissal last month of assistant editor (news), Ian Edmondson.
The paper's former editor, Andy Coulson, resigned as David Cameron's director of communications last month, saying the continuing wave of allegations about illegal phone hacking at the paper meant he was unable to do his job.
"I don't want to get caught into any traps about the degree to which or if we were misled at the time," Buscombe told Steve Hewlett on BBC Radio 4's Media Show.
"There are a lot of new allegations and a lot of revelations ... It sounds now as if we weren't fully informed."
The PCC has previously said that it had found no evidence that it was "materially misled" by the News of the World over the alleged hacking of celebrities' mobile phones.
A highly critical parliamentary report into the affair last year condemned the "collective amnesia" and "deliberate obfuscation" of News International executives.
The commission announced this week that it was setting up a working group to "draw together lessons learned" from the new police investigation and various legal cases relating to the phone-hacking affair.
Buscombe said: "The truth is we have to be incredibly careful, we cannot act in any way that is going to cut across a criminal investigation.
"We are so pleased that the police are now saying they are not going to leave any stone unturned in terms of investigating these really serious matters."
Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger, who described the original PCC inquiry into phone hacking as "worse than pointless ... it's actually rather dangerous to the press", told The Media Show today he had "not much" confidence in the new PCC working group.
"The problem with the PCC is that they simply don't have the investigative machinery to get to the truth," he told the Radio 4 show. "The report was an embarrassment, it was worse than useless. It completely discredited the PCC and the concept of regulation."
On Buscombe, he added: "There is no sign that she has realised the full enormity of what's been going on. She's got things to prove. She has announced another inquiry, let's see what becomes of that. I think the position of the PCC on this whole phone-hacking saga is unsustainable."
Buscombe, who had to make a high court apology last year after appearing to cast doubt on evidence given by a lawyer about phone hacking to a pa! rliament ary select committee, denied a suggestion that her position had become unsustainable.
She said she wanted to do everything in her power to ensure "those who are not behaving in the right way are brought to book".
"What is really important is we mustn't see all the work of the PCC through the prism of phone hacking. The PCC do a lot of positive stuff and works extremely well as a public service," Buscombe added.
"If you are asking somebody should the press regulate itself of the course the answer is no. The PCC is an independent regulator of the press, it's not owned by the press, it's funded by the press. It is not controlled by the press, that is a very important distinction.
"The other important thing to make clear is that phone hacking is a criminal offence ... and the commission has been consistently clear it is not the role of the PCC to duplicate the investigations of the police or establish criminality. Its role is to raise standards in the industry."
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