Hacking judge carpets Cameron
He blasts PM for jumping the gun on verdict... but No10 hits back
DAVID Cameron was embroiled in an extraordinary clash with an Old Bailey judge yesterday as he was accused of almost wrecking the final stages of the £100million phone-hacking trial.
Mr Justice Saunders reacted furiously to the Prime Minister’s decision to brand Andy Coulson a liar as the jury was still deliberating over two charges against the former Downing Street spin doctor.
The judge also hit out at other politicians – including Labour leader Ed Miliband, Chancellor George Osborne, Boris Johnson and John Whittingdale, chairman of the Commons media committee – who ‘ made strong comments’ about Coulson.
He wrote to Mr Cameron demanding an explanation for his comments, which were attacked in court as ‘ill-advised and premature’ and said to be unprecedented from a Prime Minister during a high-profile criminal trial.
The judge contrasted the politicians’ indecent haste to comment on the case with the restraint shown by journalists. He said: ‘The Press in court have been extremely responsible in their reporting of this case but when politicians regard it as open season one cannot expect the Press to remain silent.’
A Government source accused the judge of being at fault, having not applied reporting restrictions until the case was concluded. ‘He opened the stable door and expected the horse not to bolt. It is a ridiculous state of affairs,’ the source said.
The jury was discharged after failing to agree verdicts on the outstanding charges against Coulson – f ound guilty on Tuesday of conspiring to hack phones – and former royal editor Clive Goodman.
The Crown Prosecution Service will decide on Monday whether they will face a retrial on allegations they made corrupt payments to police.
On the dramatic final day of a trial which dragged on for eight months:
Mr Cameron again apologised for
The Press in court have been extremely responsible in their reporting of this case but when politicians regard it as open season, one cannot expect the Press to remain silent
employing Coulson at Downing Street, telling MPs his conviction showed ‘no one is above the law’
Mr Miliband accused the Prime Minister of wilfully ignoring warnings about Coulson
A Commons committee threatened an investigation into why Coulson was not security vetted
Scotland Yard chief Cressida Dick, who oversaw the hacking investigation, denied it was an attack on press freedom
Mr Cameron hired Coulson weeks after he resigned from the News of the World following the 2007 jailing of Goodman, 56, for a phone-hacking offence. In the Commons, the Prime Minister insisted the Leveson Inquiry into press standards
Mr Justice Saunders yesterday
had examined his failure to heed warnings about the risks of taking Coulson into No 10 and Coulson’s vetting process ‘exhaustively’ and found him not to be at fault.
The Old Bailey heard that the j udge had contacted Downing Street to demand an explanation f or Mr Cameron’s t el evi s ed statement on Tuesday, after the first verdicts, in which he said Coulson had given him ‘false assurances’.
Mr Justice Saunders said: ‘The jury were not aware of that before and it is a matter which is capable of affecting Mr Coulson’s credibility in their eyes.’
Clearly exasperated, he told the court he would have expected Mr Cameron and other politicians to wait for the jury to complete their decisions before making comments, adding: ‘I don’t know whether it was j ust done in ignorance or whether it was done deliberately.’
Coulson’s QC Timothy Langdale accused politicians of using the verdicts to score political points.
It was the second time the Prime Minister has been criticised for jeopardising a high-profile trial. Late last year he was rebuked for comments about a trial involving TV chef Nigella Lawson.
Downing Street insisted Mr Cameron had taken legal advice from Attorney General Dominic Grieve about what could be said.
Mr Miliband said Mr Cameron would go down in history as ‘the first ever occupant of his office who brought a criminal into the heart of Downing Street’.
Downing Street officials and Mr Cameron are said to have been unaware of Coulson’s on-off affair with News International executive Rebekah Brooks, who was cleared of all charges against her in the hacking trial.
The News of the World’s former managing editor Stuart Kuttner, who was also cleared during the trial, said he and his former colleagues were the victims of a Statesponsored stitch-up.
He told Channel 4 News he and others were ‘rounded up’ because police and prosecutors wanted to ‘take on the Press’.
Three former news editors at the paper and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire have admitted hacking and will be sentenced next week with Coulson.
Mr Kuttner, 74, said he was ‘appalled’ at what had happened at the now-defunct newspaper.
But he said police and prosecutors had then pursued journalists who were not involved. ‘What lies behind it was, in my view, an absolute unmerited assault on a free Press.’