Some of the most biting criticisms in the CMS Committee's report are of the behaviour of News of the World journalists in 2002, who hacked the phone of the murdered teenager Milly Dowler. The MPs call the paper's activities "indefensible", "grotesque" "astonishing" and "brazen", in a unanimously-agreed section.
The committee say they are still unable to publish the full evidence they have unearthed, because of the prospect of criminal charges against NoW employees involved in the hacking. They therefore do not name them. But the report makes it clear that NoW staff directly interfered with the police investigation, and attempted to "bounce" Surrey police into providing material for their "exclusives".
"The attempts by the News of the World to get a scoop on Milly Dowler led to a considerable amount of valuable police resource being redirected to the pursuit of false leads."
They say the then editor, Rebekah Brooks, must be held responsible overall, despite her testimony that she found the Dowler revelations "abhorrent" and "staggering" and had been unaware of the hacking. She sought to "portray a culture of ethical and respectful journalism." in which the paper handled such stories sensitively and in close co-operation with police, the report said, and she explained that she had been on holiday at the time of the hacking.
The report treats this account sceptically. The MPs point out that Brooks had returned from her holiday to take charge of the paper by the following week, when staff were still pursuing the Dowler story and openly telling Surrey police that they had tapes of the Dowler voicemails.
They add: "Impersonating members of a missing girl's family; besieging an employment agency; falsely asserting co-operation with the police; falsely quoting the police; and, according to their own account, obtaining Milly Dowler's mobile telephone number from her school friends are hardly the actions of a respectful and responsible news outlet. For those actions, and the culture which permitted them, the editor should accept responsibility. "
But the report draws back from detailing the full extent of the NoW's misbehaviour in the Dowler case: "We refrain from drawing conclusions about the conduct of individuals in their evidence to the committee about Milly Dowler because at least one of those individuals has been arrested and faces the prospect of criminal charges."
The NoW lawyer Tom Crone, who the report accuses of a cover-up, is roundly criticised for his evidence about a published NoW story which was obviously based on voicemail interception. "It is highly probable, in view of his role at the newspaper, that he was responsible for checking the original article's content, at the very least. Anybody who saw that article will have been aware that the information came from Milly Dowler's voicemail account. Any competent newspaper lawyer could reasonably have been expected to ask questions about how that information had been obtained. ...We are astonished that Tom Crone should have decided to present to the committee the hypothesis that the information was provided … by the police."
