Detective may have hacked for Mirror and Sun, says QC
The scale of phone hacking at the News of the World was like a "thriving cottage industry" and may also have been carried out for The Sun and Mirror, a public inquiry heard today.
Robert Jay QC, opening the Leveson inquiry into press ethics and criminal activities, said that the level of immoral and illegal activity at the Sunday tabloid went far beyond its jailed former royal editor Clive Goodman - skewering the paper's claims that hacking was carried out only by a "rogue reporter".
As the father of Milly Dowler watched from the public gallery, Mr Jay also said that private detective Glenn Mulcaire's notebooks suggest he hacked phones for The Sun and Mirror.
The investigator wrote first names in the top left-hand corner of his notes recording details of the telephone voicemails he illegally intercepted.
Some of these corresponded to News of the World employees, one of whom - referred to only as "A" - apparently made 1,453 separate requests for information from Mulcaire. But the private detective also wrote "The Sun" and a name relating to the Daily Mirror in his notebooks, the inquiry was told.
Mulcaire was jailed with Goodman in January 2007 after they admitted intercepting voicemail messages left on phones belonging to members of the royal household.
As the Leveson inquiry began, Bob Dowler sat with his head bowed as it was told how it had been ordered by the Prime Minister after it was revealed that the school girl's phone had been hacked during the search for her.
Mr Jay said: "Although the individual or individuals who deleted Milly's voicemails back in 2002 may not have realised at the time what the consequences might have been in terms of raising false hopes, public opinion was rightly sickened by the carelessness and cynicism of the perpetrators."
Lord Justice Leveson said his inquiry would adopt a "broad brush" approach and would investigate illegal and unethical press intrusion "going beyond phone hacking".
There is expected to be weeks of evidence, with celebrity victims due to start from next Monday. Mr Jay said analysis of 11,000 pages of notebooks belonging to Mulcaire had found "28 legible corner names" - his contacts at the now defunct tabloid.
Police found the names in the corner of his notebook logs detailing whose phone he was hacking. Mr Jay said: "It's clear that Goodman was not a rogue reporter. We have at least 27 other News International employees. This fact alone suggests wide-ranging illegal activity within the organisation at the relevant time.
"There are a number of ways this activity might collectively be characterised. I suggest it would not be unfair to comment it was at the very least a thriving cottage industry. It was illegal, it was grubby."
The scene was set for bombshell evidence when Mr Jay said a former employee of the Information Commissioner's Office would give evidence. He said the unnamed witness would allege that then commissioner, Richard Thomas, did not pursue an earlier investigation into covert surveillance, dubbed Operation Motorman, against certain journalists because he was afraid of them. A 2004 report from Mr Thomas named 305 journalists.
