I am reminded by a member of the Commons culture, media and sport select committee that Ian Edmondson's name figured in its report last year into press standards, privacy and libel.
The report (p.102) quoted from an internal review carried out by the solicitors, Harbottle & Lewis, in which the firm's managing partner, Lawrence Abramson, concluded:
"I can confirm that we did not find anything in those emails which appeared to us to be reasonable evidence that Clive Goodman's illegal actions were known about and supported by both or either of Andy Coulson, the editor, and Neil Wallis, the deputy editor, and/or that Ian Edmondson, the news editor, and others were carrying out similar illegal procedures."
This review of emails on the News of the World's IT system in May 2007 was supposed to assess whether there was any wider involvement in phone-hacking aside from Goodman.
The committee was sceptical about the exercise, regarding the trawl of emails as wholly inadequate. As one MP said later: "You'd have to be naïve or stupid to commit anything to an email about illegal acts."
In other words, it wasn't a proper investigation at all. It was a fig leaf, a spurious internal inquiry that - should it have been carried out by a government department - would be greeted by a paper such as the News of the World with stinging criticism.
Why, therefore, should we have the least faith in the new internal News International inquiry?
Finally, a joke doing the rounds among lawyers: "What's the collective noun for rogue reporters?"
Answer: "The News of the World news desk."
