The jury in the trial of the Sun’s Whitehall editor Clodagh Hartley has retired to deliberate its verdict.
Hartley, 40, is accused of arranging payments of £17,475 to HMRC press officer Jonathan Hall, 50, over a period spanning more than three years between 2008 and 2011 in exchange for tips and stories.
These included a leak of details of the David Cameron-led coalition’s first budget in 2010.
Hall’s girlfriend, Marta Bukarewicz, 45, is also on trial for allegedly allowing him to use her bank account for more than £13,000 of payments from News International, publisher of the Sun at the time.
Both Hartley and Bukarewicz have denied a single charge that they conspired to cause misconduct in a public office.
Judge Peter Rook told the jurors during his summing up that a “conspiracy in law is an agreement between two or more persons [which] if carried out amounts to the commission of an offence.”
He told them the “agreement does not necessarily have to be spoken” but that there “has to be meeting of minds” Hartley said during the trial that the stories were strongly in the public interest and that Hall was acting as a genuine whistleblower.
The prosecution has accused Hall of being “motivated by greed” and Hartley as “motivated by acquiring her next big scoop”.
