A senior journalist on the Sun’s political team has walked free from the Old Bailey after a jury found her not guilty of paying for leaks from a corrupt public official working for HMRC.
Clodagh Hartley was cleared of arranging unlawful payments of £18,000 for stories which included details of the budget, one of the government’s most closely guarded secrets.
The paper’s Whitehall editor is the first journalist on the Sun to be acquitted in relation to Scotland Yard’s Operation Elveden investigation into allegations of backhanders paid by newspapers for leaks.
Hartley had been prosecuted after police were handed emails, texts and payment records containing evidence that Jonathan Hall had been feeding Hartley tips and giving her assistance on stories between 2008 and 2011.
The leaks included details of Labour’s last budget in March 2010 and stories about government waste and maladministration at the highest political levels.
Hartley had told jurors she felt the budget leak was in the public interest as Hall’s details on “lines” the press office were instructed to take, proved the chancellor’s tax changes were subjected to spin.
Other stories, which Hartley had argued were in the public interest, included revelations about a £1.3m campaign to promote a government department and the £24m cost of moving a schools authority from London to Coventry.
Hal, chief of the HMRC’s law enforcement desk, has already pleaded guilty to misconduct in public office after receiving £17,475 from the Sun, it can be reported for the first time.
Hartley had said she was “just doing her job” and making contacts with sources who helped her expose the double standards in Whitehall, where the culture of spin made it difficult to get to the truth.
She said she believed that civil servants should act with integrity but that they often didn’t and that “leaks” were frequently not leaks because they were authorised by someone trying to gain political advantage.
The civil servant, who the prosecution said was motivated by greed, leaked sensitive information on Alistair Darling’s final Budget in 2010 and information aimed at embarrassing tax officials.
But detectives from Operation Elveden failed to demonstrate that the payments amounted to a criminal conspiracy rather than legitimate public interest investigations.
According to the prosecution, Hartley was paying “easy money for lazy journalism”.
But Hartley maintained Hall was a whistleblower who was appalled at the waste and complacency in HMRC.
She said she had no idea her conduct could be questioned by police and hit out at News International’s decision to hand over swathes of data to the Met.
“I thought that sources would be protected,” Hartley said.
