It is therefore not surprising that the media having scented the blood of a Minister as well as the discomfort of the Prime Minister anticipated the publication of the long awaited report of the Commons Culture and Media Committee on whether it had been previously misled, an offence which is akin to Contempt but where there is no officially stated sanction other than to require anyone named to appear at the Bar of the House and apologise. The Clerk to the House has published a note on the matter.
Any Member of the House, in this instance the Chairman of the Culture and Media Select Committees will write to the Speaker, which I assumed he has done in the form of the Committee’s report and the Speaker will determine if there is cause for the matter to considered in the form of a Motion to the House, together which such amendments, which will be debated on an appointed day after any Questions and Statements have been made.
The motion usually takes the form of reference to the Committee on Standards and Privileges which reports its conclusions in a published report with any recommendations for further action. The power and in effect the ability of the House to punish someone who is in question and where I believe the last instance was in the 1950’s.
Given the furore that following the publication of the Committee’s report it is best to quote in full the recommendations and then the basis for the statements made about Mr Murdoch and his son
274. This report concentrates on the issue of whether witnesses have previously misled a select committee of the House of Commons. We have deliberately refrained from drawing conclusions about the evidence of any individual who has been arrested as we do not wish to risk prejudicing any future criminal trial. The Committee intend to produce a supplementary report when all criminal proceedings are finished.
275. As to the veracity of the evidence the Committee has received, we are able to draw the
Following conclusions about certain of the witnesses and about News International corporately:
Les Hinton misled the Committee in 2009 in not telling the truth about payments to Clive Goodman and his role in authorising them, including the payment of his legal fee. He also misled the Committee about the extent of his knowledge of allegations that phone-hacking extended beyond Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire to others at the News of the World (see paragraphs 84, 85 and 91).
Tom Crone misled the Committee in 2009 by giving a counter-impression of the significance of confidentiality in the Gordon Taylor settlement (see paragraph 118) and sought to mislead the Committee about the commissioning of surveillance.
Tom Crone and Colin Myler misled the Committee by answering questions falsely about their knowledge of evidence that other News of the World employees had been involved in phone-hacking and other wrongdoing (see paragraphs 130 and 140).
Corporately, the News of the World and News International misled the Committee about the true nature and extent of the internal investigations they professed to have carried out in relation to phone hacking; by making statements they would have known were not fully truthful; and by failing to disclose documents which would have helped expose the truth. Their instinct throughout, until it was too late, was to cover up rather than seek out wrongdoing and discipline the perpetrators, as they also professed they would do after the criminal convictions. In failing to investigate properly, and by ignoring evidence of widespread wrongdoing, News International and its parent News Corporation exhibited wilful blindness, for which the companies’ directors—including Rupert Murdoch and James Murdoch—should ultimately be prepared to take responsibility (see paragraphs 32, 33, 60, 62, 132 and 141).
276. The effect of these actions and omissions is that the Committee’s Report to the House in February 2010 on Press standards, privacy and libel was not based on fully accurate evidence. False evidence, indeed, prevented the Committee from exposing the true extent of phone-hacking.
277. Rupert Murdoch's final admission at the Leveson inquiry that a cover up has taken place at the company may mean that the investigations conducted by Burton Copeland have been used by people at News International to perpetrate a falsehood. As such we believe there is a strong argument that the company has no right to restrain disclosure of the file. We call on the company to waive legal privilege, so that the Burton Copeland advice and investigations can be published and submitted to the Leveson inquiry
On this there is nothing which divided the committee on political or other lines
The controversy is over the issue of corporate responsibility and the role of the Mudochs in the future.
In Para 60 the committee said this “Throughout this affair,
senior News of the World and News International executives have tried to have it both ways. They have been quick to point to ‘investigations’ which supposedly cleared the newspaper of wider wrongdoing, but have also distanced themselves from the detail when it suited them.
Para 61. The account we have heard of News International’s internal e-mail review and the second review, conducted by Harbottle & Lewis, is unedifying. It is clear that the emails examined did not exonerate company employees from all suspicion of possible criminal wrongdoing, possibly not even from phone-hacking. It is probable that all those who reviewed the e-mails will have been aware that this was the case. Indeed, if the content of the e-mails had exonerated News International employees entirely, it is doubtful that Daniel Cloke and Jonathan Chapman would have seen the need to refer the matter to a firm of external lawyers at all. Doing so can only be seen as an exercise in self-protection. The fact that Jonathan Chapman drew up such narrow terms for the Harbottle & Lewis review strongly suggests that he was deliberately turning a blind eye to e-mails that he did not want to investigate further. In keeping his conclusions about the e-mails strictly within the narrow scope of his investigation, Lawrence Abramson was undoubtedly simply doing his job as a lawyer. Indeed, he seems to have made some effort to alert News International to problems that he uncovered. If either Jonathan Chapman or Daniel Cloke had raised the alarm internally, instead of sticking so rigidly to the terms of the reviews, it is conceivable that criminal activity would have been exposed and stopped far earlier. The fact that they were only looking for evidence that supported Clive Goodman’s specific assertions is not an excuse for dismissing evidence of anything else.
72. We accept that Rebekah Brooks’ letter to the Committee of November 2009 was accurate in stating that the amount of compensation paid to Clive Goodman (£40,000) fell below the statutory limit of £60,600 on such awards. The answer that she and Jonathan Chapman gave the Committee in that letter was, however, incomplete because it did not specify the significant amount of money paid to Clive Goodman by way of “notice” (£90,000), nor that he had already separately been paid £90,500 when he was first notified about his dismissal. Such incompleteness is either the result of an attempt to play down the settlement, or of ignorance about the full extent of the payments or both. None of these scenarios casts Rebekah Brooks and Jonathan Chapman in a positive light: either they should have been more frank or else they should have been better informed.
84. The total amount paid to Clive Goodman is extraordinary when one considers that he had been convicted of a criminal offence and that his actions had helped stain the reputation of the company. The double payment of a year’s salary was, by any standards, ‘over-generous’ and it is impossible, therefore, not to question the company’s motives. The pay-offs to a convicted criminal hardly reflect well on Les Hinton, who had authority over both payments. When questioned about them in 2009 he was startlingly vague and—inexcusably—sought to portray his role as a passive one, simply following the advice given to him by his subordinates. The evidence we took in 2011 suggests that he not only authorised the payments, but took the decision to make them in the first place. Furthermore, he was responsible for the double payment of Clive Goodman’s notice and, his ‘selective amnesia’ notwithstanding, he would have been perfectly well aware of what he had done. We consider, therefore, that Les Hinton misled the Committee in 2009 regarding the extent of the pay-off to Clive Goodman and his own role in making it happen. 85. The testimony regarding the payments to Clive Goodman is not the only evidence from Les Hinton which we find unsatisfactory. He first appeared before the Committee on 6 March 2007, precisely four days after Clive Goodman’s letter alleging widespread involvement in phone hacking, which was copied to him.
112 Whether or not Les Hinton had seen this letter before his appearance in 2007, he certainly had by the time he did so on 15 September 2009 when he said: ‘There was never firm evidence provided or suspicion provided that I am aware of that implicated anybody else other than Clive
within the staff of the News of the World. It just did not happen’.
113 This was not true. Clive Goodman had certainly provided ‘suspicion’ of wider involvement, but Les Hinton failed to mention it to the Committee.
114 At no stage did Les Hinton seek to correct the record, even when invited by the Committee to do so. We consider, therefore, that Les Hinton was complicit in the cover-up at News International, which included making misleading statements and giving a misleading picture to this Committee. When the predecessor Committee published its Report on Press standards, privacy and libel in 2010, it did not know the amount of News International’s settlement with Clive Goodman but was left with the “strong impression that silence has been bought”.
115 We have subsequently learnt that News International paid Clive Goodman a total of £243,502.08 from the time of his arrest in August 2006. The size of the pay-off serves to confirm our view that it was used to buy Clive Goodman’s silence. It was only on 11 August 2011, in the letter to us from James Murdoch,
116 that News International finally came clean about the extent of the pay-offs to Clive Goodman. Up until then, the evidence given by News International executives had been vague and at times incomplete, often for the stated reason that the person being asked was not the person ultimately responsible. In the case of the vague answers given by the Murdochs on 19 July 2011, we would have thought that they could have anticipated the line of questioning simply by reading the transcripts from the Committee’s evidence sessions in 2009. It is not a sufficient excuse that Les Hinton authorised the payments and has since left for the United States. Personnel changes are commonplace and we would be very surprised if News International did not keep records of its financial decisions.
105. The arrangements with Glenn Mulcaire following his conviction were every bit as distasteful as those with Clive Goodman, if the newspaper had nothing to hide. The settlement, though, is hardly surprising given News International’s over-riding desire to avoid the bad publicity which an employment tribunal would bring.
106. The facts revealed in the High Court judgment in Glenn Mulcaire’s favour in December 2011 are instructive as to the lengths to which News International has gone and damages from the civil phone hacking claims, was not only conditional on its existence not being revealed; it could also, the company’s lawyers sought to maintain,
prevent Glenn Mulcaire serving his own defence in those cases. The company’s determination to cover up the extent of the phone hacking scandal is also further demonstrated by its willingness to meet the costs of Glenn Mulcaire’s successive appeals against court rulings to reveal who instructed him to hack the phones of the various targets.
107. Following a recent Court of Appeal decision to uphold the High Court’s rulings, Glenn Mulcaire is currently taking the matter to the Supreme Court—all at News International’s expense. We look forward to the final judgment and any further light that any evidence, finally, from Glenn Mulcaire sheds on this damaging affair. So far,
with the complicity and financial support of News International, he has kept silent
119. We have been given a number of reasons why the settlement made with Gordon Taylor should have totalled as much as £700,000. Centrally, however, this huge amount was paid over a story which was never actually published and was clearly done to buy silence, avoid further damaging publicity and to avert further civil claims over phonehacking— fruitlessly, as it turned out. The very fact of settling at such a high level indicates that some senior people at News International were aware that Gordon Taylor had a case to be answered on phone-hacking and that the single ‘rogue reporter’ claim was untrue.
130. In evidence, Tom Crone and Colin Myler gave repeated assurances that there was no evidence that any further News of the World employee, beyond Clive Goodman, had been involved in phone-hacking. This was not true and, as further evidence disclosed to us by the newspaper’s solicitors Farrer & Co now shows, they would have known this was untrue when they made those statements. Both Tom Crone and Colin Myler deliberately avoided disclosing crucial information to the Committee and, when asked to do, answered questions falsely.
140 When giving evidence to the Committee, Tom Crone and Colin Myler made two assertions that were contradictory. They maintained that, whilst the ‘for Neville’ e-mail had meant that the company had had to settle the Gordon Taylor case, it had only been evidence that “knowledge” of Glenn Mulcaire’s phone-hacking activities had “passed through” the newsroom. Tom Crone’s internal briefing and Michael Silverleaf QC’s opinion on the Gordon Taylor case clearly demonstrate that they believed that the ‘for Neville’ e-mail was evidence of far more than this. In his own internal briefing, Tom proved that “we actively made use of a large number of extremely private voicemails from Gordon Taylor’s telephone in June/July 2005 and that this was pursuant to a [...]contract”. Colin Myler was sent that briefing and subsequently discussed evidence of wider involvement and problems in the newsroom with the newspaper’s solicitors. We know that Tom Crone had also had sight of counsel’s opinion from Michael Silverleaf QC which referred to “a powerful case that there is (or was) a culture of illegal information access used at NGN in order to produce stories for publication”. If Colin Myler had not read the opinion himself, he was certainly briefed on its contents. Yet in giving evidence to the Committee both Tom Crone and Colin Myler attempted to downplay the significance of the ‘for Neville’ e-mail and made no mention of the legal opinion that they had obtained. In itself this amounts to an attempt to mislead the Committee about the import of a crucial piece of evidence and the failure of the company to act upon it.
141. It is clear, furthermore, from Tom Crone’s briefing to Colin Myler and from Michael Silverleaf QC’s opinion that the impetus to settle the Taylor affair was not simply to cover up the extent of phone-hacking at the newspaper, but was also driven by the bad publicity that would result from public disclosure of illegal activity by journalists at the News of the World that had been uncovered by the Information Commissioner during Operation Motorman. Again this imperative suggests the approach of the company was to cover up wrongdoing, rather than take disciplinary action to prevent it happening.
159. Tom Crone has given conflicting accounts as to whether he showed James Murdoch the ‘for Neville’ email, while James Murdoch has been consistent in insisting that he did not see a copy of the document until he saw the redacted version published in the Committee’s 2010 Report on Press standards, privacy and libel. Whilst this may seem surprising in itself—as the email had been widely published during the summer of 2009—it is possible that he did not see a copy at the time the Gordon Taylor settlement was agreed. Given the conflicting accounts, however—and the reliability of evidence we have been given previously by witnesses from News International—the reality is that we cannot come to a definitive conclusion, one way or the other. 160. Surprising as it may seem that James Murdoch did not ask to see this crucial piece of evidence, nor the independent Counsel’s opinion, his lack of curiosity—but wilful ignorance even—subsequently is more astonishing. This stretched from July 2009— when the ‘for Neville’ e-mail first became public—through the Committee’s critical report in February 2010 and further allegations in the New York Times in September 2010, to as far out as December 2010, when disclosures in the Sienna Miller case finally led him to realise, according to his own account, that the ‘one rogue reporter’ defence. Was untenable.
161. In 2009 Tom Crone and Colin Myler asserted that they had investigated the ‘for Neville’ e-mail and that there was no concrete evidence to support the allegation that journalists other than Clive Goodman had been involved in phone-hacking. If they admitted to us that in 2008 they had made James Murdoch aware of the serious implications of the e-mail, they would have had to admit to having misled the Committee. They clearly did not tell truth to us then. Though their evidence has been demonstrably unreliable in other respects, however, it does not necessarily follow that they are not telling the truth with respect to James Murdoch and the ‘for Neville’ e-mail and Silverleaf opinion. We simply cannot adjudicate with confidence either way and suspect, as with so much to do with the phone-hacking saga, that more light will be shone on this as more documents and evidence emerge in the future. We may well revisit our conclusions in this Report if more information, currently subject to criminal proceedings or subject to legal privilege which has not been waived, is disclosed.
162. James Murdoch told us that, with the benefit of hindsight, News International should have taken note of the Committee’s 2010 Press standards, privacy and libel Report and investigated the provenance of the ‘for Neville’ e-mail more thoroughly. He also expressed regret that the company had moved to an “aggressive defence” so quickly. We would add to these admissions that, as the head of a journalistic enterprise, we are astonished that James Murdoch did not seek more information or ask to see the evidence and counsel’s opinion when he was briefed by Tom Crone and Colin Myler on the Gordon Taylor case. Even for a large company, £700,000 is a not inconsequential sum of money, and it is extraordinary that the Chief Executive should authorise its payment on the basis of such scant information. If he did, indeed, not ask to see either document, particularly the counsel’s opinion, this clearly raises questions of competence on the part of News International’s then Chairman and Chief Executive.
163. There is, however, a bigger picture—and longer time frame—that is relevant beyond the Gordon Taylor settlement. Not specifically being shown evidence, nor asking to see it, nor discussing explicitly its ramifications is not the same as not being aware. From the conflicting accounts, and despite our surprise, we cannot say whether in 2008 James Murdoch was aware of the significance of the Taylor case, or of the importance attached by his executives to it being settled in confidence. We have been told that, notwithstanding our 2010 Report, the further media investigations including the New York Times, the settlement with Max Clifford and further civil cases by non royal victims, it was as late as December 2010 that James Murdoch—and Rupert Murdoch—realised that the one ‘rogue reporter’ line was untrue. This, we consider, to be simply astonishing.
174. The fact that James Murdoch responded within three minutes to an email, on a Saturday—7 June 2008—from Colin Myler granting him a meeting the following Tuesday over the Gordon Taylor case proves nothing one way or the other about James Murdoch’s awareness of the wider significance of the Gordon Taylor claim. 175. James Murdoch, Tom Crone, Colin Myler and Julian Pike all agree that James Murdoch was briefed on the Gordon Taylor case on 10 June 2008. The fact that all witnesses agreed that the 10 June 2008 meeting only lasted in the region of 15 minutes straightforwardly.
176. Neither James Murdoch nor Colin Myler has any recollection of a conversation that took place between them on 27 May 2008. James Murdoch’s diary confirms that no formal meeting was scheduled to occur on that day. It is possible that a more informal and impromptu conversation took place. Indeed, there would be no reason for Tom Crone’s briefing note to exist at all if it had not been Colin Myler’s intention to speak to James Murdoch. It would also be difficult to explain the reference in Julian Pike’s notes to a conversation between James Murdoch and Colin Myler unless Colin Myler had lied to Pike about a conversation having taken place. It is difficult to understand what possible motive he could have had for doing so.
177. The e-mail exchange that took place on 7 June 2008 demonstrates that James Murdoch was given the opportunity to appraise himself of the Gordon Taylor case and to make himself aware of its significance. Had he read the e-mail chain properly he ought to have asked searching questions of Colin Myler and Tom Crone. If he did not read the e-mail chain, there is no good excuse for this and it betrays an astonishing lack of curiosity on the part of a Chief Executive. Had James Murdoch been more attentive to the correspondence that he received at the time, he could have taken action on phone-hacking in 2008 and this Committee could have been told the truth in 2009. We have, however, seen no firm evidence that James Murdoch had any significant involvement in negotiating the Gordon Taylor settlement until he authorised the increased settlement amount on 10 June 2008.
200 From the civil claims to date, it is clear that phone-hacking at the News of the World started as far back as 2001. Given the confidentiality of disclosures in the civil cases and the wishes of Mr Justice Vos not to reveal names before possible criminal proceedings, we only set out certain of the facts which are on the public record, as we have gathered them, in order to bring this Report up to date. The Metropolitan Police are currently investigating and we also do not wish to run the risk of prejudicing any future trials by going beyond what is already publicly available.
215. Far from having an epiphany at the end of 2010, the truth, we believe, is that by spring 2011, because of the civil actions, the company finally realised that its containment approach had failed, and that a ‘one rogue reporter’—or even ‘two rogue journalists’—stance no longer had any shred of credibility. Since then, News Corporation’s strategy has been to lay the blame on certain individuals, particularly Colin Myler, Tom Crone and Jonathan Chapman, and lawyers, whilst striving to protect more senior figures, notably James Murdoch. Colin Myler, Tom Crone and Jonathan Chapman should certainly have acted on information they had about phone hacking and other wrongdoing, but they cannot be allowed to carry the whole of the blame, as News Corporation has clearly intended. Even if there were a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ culture at News International, the whole affair demonstrates huge failings of corporate governance at the company and its parent, News Corporation.
216. The history of the News of the World at hearings of 216. The history of the News of the World at hearings of the Committee is a long one, characterised by “collective amnesia” and a reluctance fully and fairly to provide the Committee with the information it sought. News International has repeatedly stonewalled, obfuscated and misled and only come clean, reluctantly, when no other course of action was sensible and when its wider commercial interests were threatened. In Rupert Murdoch's own words to the Leveson inquiry, News Corporation in the UK mounted a cover-up.
217. In any company, the corporate culture comes from the top. In the case of the News of the World this is ultimately the American parent company of News International, News Corporation and its chairman and chief executive, Rupert Murdoch. Rupert Murdoch has repeatedly claimed that News Corporation has a zero tolerance approach towards wrong doing. He stated this, indeed, long before he gave evidence to the committee, when he gave the inaugural Thatcher Lecture in London on 21 October 2010: “we will not tolerate wrongdoing” he told his audience. He also made similar statements at the annual general meeting of News Corporation in Los Angeles in October 2011 when, in relation to phone-hacking, he said there was “no excuse for such unethical behaviour” at the company and that staff had to be “beacons for good, professional and ethical behaviour”.
218. On 8 April 2011, News International finally issued a statement admitting that phone hacking had indeed occurred in a number of cases and was not restricted to the News of the World’s former royal reporter, Clive Goodman. It offered certain civil litigants an unreserved apology and a compensation scheme. At this point, the ‘single rogue reporter’ defence was clearly dead. That defence had become very questionable long before, but now that News International had finally acknowledged that hacking had been widespread, it was clearly no longer tenable.
219. In his testimony to us and also the Leveson inquiry, Rupert Murdoch has demonstrated excellent powers of recall and grasp of detail, when it has suited him. Had he been entirely open with shareholders on 21 October 2010—and with this Committee on 19 July 2011—he would have learned for the first time on some date between 21 October 2010 and 8 April 2011 that he had been misled by senior employees of his company.
220. Such a revelation, had it happened, would have been a shock. He was the chairman and chief executive officer of a major international company. He had repeatedly given clear and categorical assurances to the general public, and to his shareholders, that phone hacking and other wrongdoing were not widespread and would not be tolerated at News International. These assurances had now turned out to be false. This is not a situation a chief executive would or could tolerate, still less simply ignore. Action would have been taken.
221. Yet, when asked by the Committee if he “knew for sure in January [2011] that the ‘one rogue reporter’ line was false”, he replied: “I forget the date.” This is barely credible. Had he really learned for the first time at some point in the six months following his Thatcher Lecture that he had been deceived, and so that he in turn had deceived the public and his shareholders, that moment would have been lodged forever in his memory. It would have been an unforgettable piece of information.
222. On the other hand, had he suspected all along that phone-hacking and other wrongdoing was endemic at the News of the World—that the means justified the ends in beating the competition and getting the story—and that elaborate, expensive steps were being taken to conceal it, it is entirely understandable that the precise moment between 21 October 2010 and 8 April 2011, when he recognised the game was up, might have slipped his memory. And all the more so, had he already realised the truth long before those dates.
223. In such circumstances, even if he took no part in discussions about what to reveal and when, there would probably not have been a clear moment of revelation. There would have been a gradual erosion of the ‘one rogue reporter’ fiction to the point where a collective decision to abandon it would have been taken. In those circumstances, it would be entirely understandable that he should forget the date, if indeed there was a single date on which the decision was taken, rather than an unfolding contingency plan involving gradual admissions.
224. The notion that—given all that had gone on, right back to evidence given over to the police to our predecessor Committee in 2003—a hands-on proprietor like Rupert Murdoch had no inkling that wrongdoing and questionable practice was not widespread at the News of the World is simply not credible.
Given his evidently fearsome reputation, the reluctance of News International employees to be open and honest internally and in their evidence to the Committee is readily understandable. In assessing their evidence, the culture emanating from the top must be taken into account, and is likely to have had a profound effect on their approach in 2007 and 2009 in evidence given to the Committee.
225. A further example of this culture and Rupert Murdoch
and his management’s failure to focus on serious wrongdoing within the organisation was his response to the Committee’s questions about attempts by Neville Thurlbeck, then chief reporter of the News of the World, to blackmail two of the women involved in the newspaper’s controversial exposure of Max Mosley’s private life. His reply that this was the first he had heard of this claim and that no one in the UK company had brought the allegation to his attention—if this was indeed the case—indicates a seriously wrong state of affairs in his company. Furthermore, it appears that having had the matter brought to his attention during questioning by our committee, he had still not read the Eady judgement by the time he gave evidence to the Leveson inquiry on 26th April 2012.
226. When asked if he agreed with the judge in that case that this “discloses a remarkable state of affairs at News International”, Rupert Murdoch replied “no”. He appeared to see nothing unusual in News International failing to investigate or take action when a senior employee was cited by a High Court judge as resorting to blackmail in the course of his employment. This wilful turning of a blind eye would also explain Rupert Murdoch’s failure to respond (or to have another executive respond) to a letter sent to him in New York by Max Mosley on 10 March 2011, inviting him to order an investigation at News International into the blackmail allegation.
227. Another example of Rupert Murdoch’s toleration of alleged wrongdoing is his reinstatement, on 17 February 2012, of journalists who had been arrested. This is in contrast to most organisations this Committee can think of, which would have suspended such employees until the police had confirmed that no charges were being brought.
228. Rupert Murdoch told this Committee that his alleged lack of oversight of News International and the News of the World was due to it being “less than 1% of our company”. This self-portrayal, however, as a hands-off proprietor is entirely at odds with numerous other accounts, including those of previous editors and from Rebekah Brooks, who told us she spoke to Rupert Murdoch regularly and ‘on average, every other day’. It was, indeed, we consider, a misleading account of his involvement and influence with his newspapers.
I now come to the additional finding on which the committee divided and led the four Conservative members to dissent form the report as it stood. By a majority of 6 votes to 4 with the chairman as is custom abstaining unless he vote is tied the Committee concluded
229. On the basis of the facts and evidence before the Committee, we conclude that, if at all relevant times Rupert Murdoch did not take steps to become fully informed about phone-hacking, he turned a blind eye and exhibited wilful blindness to what was going on in his companies and publications. This culture, we consider, permeated from the top throughout the organisation and speaks volumes about the lack of effective corporate governance at News Corporation and News International. We conclude, therefore, that Rupert Murdoch is not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company.
And it has to be stressed it is only the additional sentence at the end which provoked the dissent. The issue is that there was no prior specific discussion about the fitness issue which is a question for another independent statutory body Ofcom to consider whenever such an issue appears appropriate. However whether there was specific discussion or not the rest of the report with the main points quoted leads to such a conclusion.
Tom Watson was fully justified by what had been discussed at Committee and what had been said at Leveson together with his knowledge of what was happening in relation to the Civil action together with the number of arrests to launch forth in the way he did. It is unfortunate that it coincided with the Local authority Elections and with the revelations regarding the behaviour of the Culture Minister and his personal adviser.
But as every also agreed at the Committee is only a chapter in what will prove several years before the book is completed. Meanwhile the other shareholders and the British and US public should make it is plan the Murdoch should relinquish there executive powers over their holdings in the companies.
Any Member of the House, in this instance the Chairman of the Culture and Media Select Committees will write to the Speaker, which I assumed he has done in the form of the Committee’s report and the Speaker will determine if there is cause for the matter to considered in the form of a Motion to the House, together which such amendments, which will be debated on an appointed day after any Questions and Statements have been made.
The motion usually takes the form of reference to the Committee on Standards and Privileges which reports its conclusions in a published report with any recommendations for further action. The power and in effect the ability of the House to punish someone who is in question and where I believe the last instance was in the 1950’s.
Given the furore that following the publication of the Committee’s report it is best to quote in full the recommendations and then the basis for the statements made about Mr Murdoch and his son
274. This report concentrates on the issue of whether witnesses have previously misled a select committee of the House of Commons. We have deliberately refrained from drawing conclusions about the evidence of any individual who has been arrested as we do not wish to risk prejudicing any future criminal trial. The Committee intend to produce a supplementary report when all criminal proceedings are finished.
275. As to the veracity of the evidence the Committee has received, we are able to draw the
Following conclusions about certain of the witnesses and about News International corporately:
Les Hinton misled the Committee in 2009 in not telling the truth about payments to Clive Goodman and his role in authorising them, including the payment of his legal fee. He also misled the Committee about the extent of his knowledge of allegations that phone-hacking extended beyond Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire to others at the News of the World (see paragraphs 84, 85 and 91).
Tom Crone misled the Committee in 2009 by giving a counter-impression of the significance of confidentiality in the Gordon Taylor settlement (see paragraph 118) and sought to mislead the Committee about the commissioning of surveillance.
Tom Crone and Colin Myler misled the Committee by answering questions falsely about their knowledge of evidence that other News of the World employees had been involved in phone-hacking and other wrongdoing (see paragraphs 130 and 140).
Corporately, the News of the World and News International misled the Committee about the true nature and extent of the internal investigations they professed to have carried out in relation to phone hacking; by making statements they would have known were not fully truthful; and by failing to disclose documents which would have helped expose the truth. Their instinct throughout, until it was too late, was to cover up rather than seek out wrongdoing and discipline the perpetrators, as they also professed they would do after the criminal convictions. In failing to investigate properly, and by ignoring evidence of widespread wrongdoing, News International and its parent News Corporation exhibited wilful blindness, for which the companies’ directors—including Rupert Murdoch and James Murdoch—should ultimately be prepared to take responsibility (see paragraphs 32, 33, 60, 62, 132 and 141).
276. The effect of these actions and omissions is that the Committee’s Report to the House in February 2010 on Press standards, privacy and libel was not based on fully accurate evidence. False evidence, indeed, prevented the Committee from exposing the true extent of phone-hacking.
277. Rupert Murdoch's final admission at the Leveson inquiry that a cover up has taken place at the company may mean that the investigations conducted by Burton Copeland have been used by people at News International to perpetrate a falsehood. As such we believe there is a strong argument that the company has no right to restrain disclosure of the file. We call on the company to waive legal privilege, so that the Burton Copeland advice and investigations can be published and submitted to the Leveson inquiry
On this there is nothing which divided the committee on political or other lines
The controversy is over the issue of corporate responsibility and the role of the Mudochs in the future.
In Para 60 the committee said this “Throughout this affair,
senior News of the World and News International executives have tried to have it both ways. They have been quick to point to ‘investigations’ which supposedly cleared the newspaper of wider wrongdoing, but have also distanced themselves from the detail when it suited them.
Para 61. The account we have heard of News International’s internal e-mail review and the second review, conducted by Harbottle & Lewis, is unedifying. It is clear that the emails examined did not exonerate company employees from all suspicion of possible criminal wrongdoing, possibly not even from phone-hacking. It is probable that all those who reviewed the e-mails will have been aware that this was the case. Indeed, if the content of the e-mails had exonerated News International employees entirely, it is doubtful that Daniel Cloke and Jonathan Chapman would have seen the need to refer the matter to a firm of external lawyers at all. Doing so can only be seen as an exercise in self-protection. The fact that Jonathan Chapman drew up such narrow terms for the Harbottle & Lewis review strongly suggests that he was deliberately turning a blind eye to e-mails that he did not want to investigate further. In keeping his conclusions about the e-mails strictly within the narrow scope of his investigation, Lawrence Abramson was undoubtedly simply doing his job as a lawyer. Indeed, he seems to have made some effort to alert News International to problems that he uncovered. If either Jonathan Chapman or Daniel Cloke had raised the alarm internally, instead of sticking so rigidly to the terms of the reviews, it is conceivable that criminal activity would have been exposed and stopped far earlier. The fact that they were only looking for evidence that supported Clive Goodman’s specific assertions is not an excuse for dismissing evidence of anything else.
72. We accept that Rebekah Brooks’ letter to the Committee of November 2009 was accurate in stating that the amount of compensation paid to Clive Goodman (£40,000) fell below the statutory limit of £60,600 on such awards. The answer that she and Jonathan Chapman gave the Committee in that letter was, however, incomplete because it did not specify the significant amount of money paid to Clive Goodman by way of “notice” (£90,000), nor that he had already separately been paid £90,500 when he was first notified about his dismissal. Such incompleteness is either the result of an attempt to play down the settlement, or of ignorance about the full extent of the payments or both. None of these scenarios casts Rebekah Brooks and Jonathan Chapman in a positive light: either they should have been more frank or else they should have been better informed.
84. The total amount paid to Clive Goodman is extraordinary when one considers that he had been convicted of a criminal offence and that his actions had helped stain the reputation of the company. The double payment of a year’s salary was, by any standards, ‘over-generous’ and it is impossible, therefore, not to question the company’s motives. The pay-offs to a convicted criminal hardly reflect well on Les Hinton, who had authority over both payments. When questioned about them in 2009 he was startlingly vague and—inexcusably—sought to portray his role as a passive one, simply following the advice given to him by his subordinates. The evidence we took in 2011 suggests that he not only authorised the payments, but took the decision to make them in the first place. Furthermore, he was responsible for the double payment of Clive Goodman’s notice and, his ‘selective amnesia’ notwithstanding, he would have been perfectly well aware of what he had done. We consider, therefore, that Les Hinton misled the Committee in 2009 regarding the extent of the pay-off to Clive Goodman and his own role in making it happen. 85. The testimony regarding the payments to Clive Goodman is not the only evidence from Les Hinton which we find unsatisfactory. He first appeared before the Committee on 6 March 2007, precisely four days after Clive Goodman’s letter alleging widespread involvement in phone hacking, which was copied to him.
112 Whether or not Les Hinton had seen this letter before his appearance in 2007, he certainly had by the time he did so on 15 September 2009 when he said: ‘There was never firm evidence provided or suspicion provided that I am aware of that implicated anybody else other than Clive
within the staff of the News of the World. It just did not happen’.
113 This was not true. Clive Goodman had certainly provided ‘suspicion’ of wider involvement, but Les Hinton failed to mention it to the Committee.
114 At no stage did Les Hinton seek to correct the record, even when invited by the Committee to do so. We consider, therefore, that Les Hinton was complicit in the cover-up at News International, which included making misleading statements and giving a misleading picture to this Committee. When the predecessor Committee published its Report on Press standards, privacy and libel in 2010, it did not know the amount of News International’s settlement with Clive Goodman but was left with the “strong impression that silence has been bought”.
115 We have subsequently learnt that News International paid Clive Goodman a total of £243,502.08 from the time of his arrest in August 2006. The size of the pay-off serves to confirm our view that it was used to buy Clive Goodman’s silence. It was only on 11 August 2011, in the letter to us from James Murdoch,
116 that News International finally came clean about the extent of the pay-offs to Clive Goodman. Up until then, the evidence given by News International executives had been vague and at times incomplete, often for the stated reason that the person being asked was not the person ultimately responsible. In the case of the vague answers given by the Murdochs on 19 July 2011, we would have thought that they could have anticipated the line of questioning simply by reading the transcripts from the Committee’s evidence sessions in 2009. It is not a sufficient excuse that Les Hinton authorised the payments and has since left for the United States. Personnel changes are commonplace and we would be very surprised if News International did not keep records of its financial decisions.
105. The arrangements with Glenn Mulcaire following his conviction were every bit as distasteful as those with Clive Goodman, if the newspaper had nothing to hide. The settlement, though, is hardly surprising given News International’s over-riding desire to avoid the bad publicity which an employment tribunal would bring.
106. The facts revealed in the High Court judgment in Glenn Mulcaire’s favour in December 2011 are instructive as to the lengths to which News International has gone and damages from the civil phone hacking claims, was not only conditional on its existence not being revealed; it could also, the company’s lawyers sought to maintain,
prevent Glenn Mulcaire serving his own defence in those cases. The company’s determination to cover up the extent of the phone hacking scandal is also further demonstrated by its willingness to meet the costs of Glenn Mulcaire’s successive appeals against court rulings to reveal who instructed him to hack the phones of the various targets.
107. Following a recent Court of Appeal decision to uphold the High Court’s rulings, Glenn Mulcaire is currently taking the matter to the Supreme Court—all at News International’s expense. We look forward to the final judgment and any further light that any evidence, finally, from Glenn Mulcaire sheds on this damaging affair. So far,
with the complicity and financial support of News International, he has kept silent
119. We have been given a number of reasons why the settlement made with Gordon Taylor should have totalled as much as £700,000. Centrally, however, this huge amount was paid over a story which was never actually published and was clearly done to buy silence, avoid further damaging publicity and to avert further civil claims over phonehacking— fruitlessly, as it turned out. The very fact of settling at such a high level indicates that some senior people at News International were aware that Gordon Taylor had a case to be answered on phone-hacking and that the single ‘rogue reporter’ claim was untrue.
130. In evidence, Tom Crone and Colin Myler gave repeated assurances that there was no evidence that any further News of the World employee, beyond Clive Goodman, had been involved in phone-hacking. This was not true and, as further evidence disclosed to us by the newspaper’s solicitors Farrer & Co now shows, they would have known this was untrue when they made those statements. Both Tom Crone and Colin Myler deliberately avoided disclosing crucial information to the Committee and, when asked to do, answered questions falsely.
140 When giving evidence to the Committee, Tom Crone and Colin Myler made two assertions that were contradictory. They maintained that, whilst the ‘for Neville’ e-mail had meant that the company had had to settle the Gordon Taylor case, it had only been evidence that “knowledge” of Glenn Mulcaire’s phone-hacking activities had “passed through” the newsroom. Tom Crone’s internal briefing and Michael Silverleaf QC’s opinion on the Gordon Taylor case clearly demonstrate that they believed that the ‘for Neville’ e-mail was evidence of far more than this. In his own internal briefing, Tom proved that “we actively made use of a large number of extremely private voicemails from Gordon Taylor’s telephone in June/July 2005 and that this was pursuant to a [...]contract”. Colin Myler was sent that briefing and subsequently discussed evidence of wider involvement and problems in the newsroom with the newspaper’s solicitors. We know that Tom Crone had also had sight of counsel’s opinion from Michael Silverleaf QC which referred to “a powerful case that there is (or was) a culture of illegal information access used at NGN in order to produce stories for publication”. If Colin Myler had not read the opinion himself, he was certainly briefed on its contents. Yet in giving evidence to the Committee both Tom Crone and Colin Myler attempted to downplay the significance of the ‘for Neville’ e-mail and made no mention of the legal opinion that they had obtained. In itself this amounts to an attempt to mislead the Committee about the import of a crucial piece of evidence and the failure of the company to act upon it.
141. It is clear, furthermore, from Tom Crone’s briefing to Colin Myler and from Michael Silverleaf QC’s opinion that the impetus to settle the Taylor affair was not simply to cover up the extent of phone-hacking at the newspaper, but was also driven by the bad publicity that would result from public disclosure of illegal activity by journalists at the News of the World that had been uncovered by the Information Commissioner during Operation Motorman. Again this imperative suggests the approach of the company was to cover up wrongdoing, rather than take disciplinary action to prevent it happening.
159. Tom Crone has given conflicting accounts as to whether he showed James Murdoch the ‘for Neville’ email, while James Murdoch has been consistent in insisting that he did not see a copy of the document until he saw the redacted version published in the Committee’s 2010 Report on Press standards, privacy and libel. Whilst this may seem surprising in itself—as the email had been widely published during the summer of 2009—it is possible that he did not see a copy at the time the Gordon Taylor settlement was agreed. Given the conflicting accounts, however—and the reliability of evidence we have been given previously by witnesses from News International—the reality is that we cannot come to a definitive conclusion, one way or the other. 160. Surprising as it may seem that James Murdoch did not ask to see this crucial piece of evidence, nor the independent Counsel’s opinion, his lack of curiosity—but wilful ignorance even—subsequently is more astonishing. This stretched from July 2009— when the ‘for Neville’ e-mail first became public—through the Committee’s critical report in February 2010 and further allegations in the New York Times in September 2010, to as far out as December 2010, when disclosures in the Sienna Miller case finally led him to realise, according to his own account, that the ‘one rogue reporter’ defence. Was untenable.
161. In 2009 Tom Crone and Colin Myler asserted that they had investigated the ‘for Neville’ e-mail and that there was no concrete evidence to support the allegation that journalists other than Clive Goodman had been involved in phone-hacking. If they admitted to us that in 2008 they had made James Murdoch aware of the serious implications of the e-mail, they would have had to admit to having misled the Committee. They clearly did not tell truth to us then. Though their evidence has been demonstrably unreliable in other respects, however, it does not necessarily follow that they are not telling the truth with respect to James Murdoch and the ‘for Neville’ e-mail and Silverleaf opinion. We simply cannot adjudicate with confidence either way and suspect, as with so much to do with the phone-hacking saga, that more light will be shone on this as more documents and evidence emerge in the future. We may well revisit our conclusions in this Report if more information, currently subject to criminal proceedings or subject to legal privilege which has not been waived, is disclosed.
162. James Murdoch told us that, with the benefit of hindsight, News International should have taken note of the Committee’s 2010 Press standards, privacy and libel Report and investigated the provenance of the ‘for Neville’ e-mail more thoroughly. He also expressed regret that the company had moved to an “aggressive defence” so quickly. We would add to these admissions that, as the head of a journalistic enterprise, we are astonished that James Murdoch did not seek more information or ask to see the evidence and counsel’s opinion when he was briefed by Tom Crone and Colin Myler on the Gordon Taylor case. Even for a large company, £700,000 is a not inconsequential sum of money, and it is extraordinary that the Chief Executive should authorise its payment on the basis of such scant information. If he did, indeed, not ask to see either document, particularly the counsel’s opinion, this clearly raises questions of competence on the part of News International’s then Chairman and Chief Executive.
163. There is, however, a bigger picture—and longer time frame—that is relevant beyond the Gordon Taylor settlement. Not specifically being shown evidence, nor asking to see it, nor discussing explicitly its ramifications is not the same as not being aware. From the conflicting accounts, and despite our surprise, we cannot say whether in 2008 James Murdoch was aware of the significance of the Taylor case, or of the importance attached by his executives to it being settled in confidence. We have been told that, notwithstanding our 2010 Report, the further media investigations including the New York Times, the settlement with Max Clifford and further civil cases by non royal victims, it was as late as December 2010 that James Murdoch—and Rupert Murdoch—realised that the one ‘rogue reporter’ line was untrue. This, we consider, to be simply astonishing.
174. The fact that James Murdoch responded within three minutes to an email, on a Saturday—7 June 2008—from Colin Myler granting him a meeting the following Tuesday over the Gordon Taylor case proves nothing one way or the other about James Murdoch’s awareness of the wider significance of the Gordon Taylor claim. 175. James Murdoch, Tom Crone, Colin Myler and Julian Pike all agree that James Murdoch was briefed on the Gordon Taylor case on 10 June 2008. The fact that all witnesses agreed that the 10 June 2008 meeting only lasted in the region of 15 minutes straightforwardly.
176. Neither James Murdoch nor Colin Myler has any recollection of a conversation that took place between them on 27 May 2008. James Murdoch’s diary confirms that no formal meeting was scheduled to occur on that day. It is possible that a more informal and impromptu conversation took place. Indeed, there would be no reason for Tom Crone’s briefing note to exist at all if it had not been Colin Myler’s intention to speak to James Murdoch. It would also be difficult to explain the reference in Julian Pike’s notes to a conversation between James Murdoch and Colin Myler unless Colin Myler had lied to Pike about a conversation having taken place. It is difficult to understand what possible motive he could have had for doing so.
177. The e-mail exchange that took place on 7 June 2008 demonstrates that James Murdoch was given the opportunity to appraise himself of the Gordon Taylor case and to make himself aware of its significance. Had he read the e-mail chain properly he ought to have asked searching questions of Colin Myler and Tom Crone. If he did not read the e-mail chain, there is no good excuse for this and it betrays an astonishing lack of curiosity on the part of a Chief Executive. Had James Murdoch been more attentive to the correspondence that he received at the time, he could have taken action on phone-hacking in 2008 and this Committee could have been told the truth in 2009. We have, however, seen no firm evidence that James Murdoch had any significant involvement in negotiating the Gordon Taylor settlement until he authorised the increased settlement amount on 10 June 2008.
200 From the civil claims to date, it is clear that phone-hacking at the News of the World started as far back as 2001. Given the confidentiality of disclosures in the civil cases and the wishes of Mr Justice Vos not to reveal names before possible criminal proceedings, we only set out certain of the facts which are on the public record, as we have gathered them, in order to bring this Report up to date. The Metropolitan Police are currently investigating and we also do not wish to run the risk of prejudicing any future trials by going beyond what is already publicly available.
215. Far from having an epiphany at the end of 2010, the truth, we believe, is that by spring 2011, because of the civil actions, the company finally realised that its containment approach had failed, and that a ‘one rogue reporter’—or even ‘two rogue journalists’—stance no longer had any shred of credibility. Since then, News Corporation’s strategy has been to lay the blame on certain individuals, particularly Colin Myler, Tom Crone and Jonathan Chapman, and lawyers, whilst striving to protect more senior figures, notably James Murdoch. Colin Myler, Tom Crone and Jonathan Chapman should certainly have acted on information they had about phone hacking and other wrongdoing, but they cannot be allowed to carry the whole of the blame, as News Corporation has clearly intended. Even if there were a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ culture at News International, the whole affair demonstrates huge failings of corporate governance at the company and its parent, News Corporation.
216. The history of the News of the World at hearings of 216. The history of the News of the World at hearings of the Committee is a long one, characterised by “collective amnesia” and a reluctance fully and fairly to provide the Committee with the information it sought. News International has repeatedly stonewalled, obfuscated and misled and only come clean, reluctantly, when no other course of action was sensible and when its wider commercial interests were threatened. In Rupert Murdoch's own words to the Leveson inquiry, News Corporation in the UK mounted a cover-up.
217. In any company, the corporate culture comes from the top. In the case of the News of the World this is ultimately the American parent company of News International, News Corporation and its chairman and chief executive, Rupert Murdoch. Rupert Murdoch has repeatedly claimed that News Corporation has a zero tolerance approach towards wrong doing. He stated this, indeed, long before he gave evidence to the committee, when he gave the inaugural Thatcher Lecture in London on 21 October 2010: “we will not tolerate wrongdoing” he told his audience. He also made similar statements at the annual general meeting of News Corporation in Los Angeles in October 2011 when, in relation to phone-hacking, he said there was “no excuse for such unethical behaviour” at the company and that staff had to be “beacons for good, professional and ethical behaviour”.
218. On 8 April 2011, News International finally issued a statement admitting that phone hacking had indeed occurred in a number of cases and was not restricted to the News of the World’s former royal reporter, Clive Goodman. It offered certain civil litigants an unreserved apology and a compensation scheme. At this point, the ‘single rogue reporter’ defence was clearly dead. That defence had become very questionable long before, but now that News International had finally acknowledged that hacking had been widespread, it was clearly no longer tenable.
219. In his testimony to us and also the Leveson inquiry, Rupert Murdoch has demonstrated excellent powers of recall and grasp of detail, when it has suited him. Had he been entirely open with shareholders on 21 October 2010—and with this Committee on 19 July 2011—he would have learned for the first time on some date between 21 October 2010 and 8 April 2011 that he had been misled by senior employees of his company.
220. Such a revelation, had it happened, would have been a shock. He was the chairman and chief executive officer of a major international company. He had repeatedly given clear and categorical assurances to the general public, and to his shareholders, that phone hacking and other wrongdoing were not widespread and would not be tolerated at News International. These assurances had now turned out to be false. This is not a situation a chief executive would or could tolerate, still less simply ignore. Action would have been taken.
221. Yet, when asked by the Committee if he “knew for sure in January [2011] that the ‘one rogue reporter’ line was false”, he replied: “I forget the date.” This is barely credible. Had he really learned for the first time at some point in the six months following his Thatcher Lecture that he had been deceived, and so that he in turn had deceived the public and his shareholders, that moment would have been lodged forever in his memory. It would have been an unforgettable piece of information.
222. On the other hand, had he suspected all along that phone-hacking and other wrongdoing was endemic at the News of the World—that the means justified the ends in beating the competition and getting the story—and that elaborate, expensive steps were being taken to conceal it, it is entirely understandable that the precise moment between 21 October 2010 and 8 April 2011, when he recognised the game was up, might have slipped his memory. And all the more so, had he already realised the truth long before those dates.
223. In such circumstances, even if he took no part in discussions about what to reveal and when, there would probably not have been a clear moment of revelation. There would have been a gradual erosion of the ‘one rogue reporter’ fiction to the point where a collective decision to abandon it would have been taken. In those circumstances, it would be entirely understandable that he should forget the date, if indeed there was a single date on which the decision was taken, rather than an unfolding contingency plan involving gradual admissions.
224. The notion that—given all that had gone on, right back to evidence given over to the police to our predecessor Committee in 2003—a hands-on proprietor like Rupert Murdoch had no inkling that wrongdoing and questionable practice was not widespread at the News of the World is simply not credible.
Given his evidently fearsome reputation, the reluctance of News International employees to be open and honest internally and in their evidence to the Committee is readily understandable. In assessing their evidence, the culture emanating from the top must be taken into account, and is likely to have had a profound effect on their approach in 2007 and 2009 in evidence given to the Committee.
225. A further example of this culture and Rupert Murdoch
and his management’s failure to focus on serious wrongdoing within the organisation was his response to the Committee’s questions about attempts by Neville Thurlbeck, then chief reporter of the News of the World, to blackmail two of the women involved in the newspaper’s controversial exposure of Max Mosley’s private life. His reply that this was the first he had heard of this claim and that no one in the UK company had brought the allegation to his attention—if this was indeed the case—indicates a seriously wrong state of affairs in his company. Furthermore, it appears that having had the matter brought to his attention during questioning by our committee, he had still not read the Eady judgement by the time he gave evidence to the Leveson inquiry on 26th April 2012.
226. When asked if he agreed with the judge in that case that this “discloses a remarkable state of affairs at News International”, Rupert Murdoch replied “no”. He appeared to see nothing unusual in News International failing to investigate or take action when a senior employee was cited by a High Court judge as resorting to blackmail in the course of his employment. This wilful turning of a blind eye would also explain Rupert Murdoch’s failure to respond (or to have another executive respond) to a letter sent to him in New York by Max Mosley on 10 March 2011, inviting him to order an investigation at News International into the blackmail allegation.
227. Another example of Rupert Murdoch’s toleration of alleged wrongdoing is his reinstatement, on 17 February 2012, of journalists who had been arrested. This is in contrast to most organisations this Committee can think of, which would have suspended such employees until the police had confirmed that no charges were being brought.
228. Rupert Murdoch told this Committee that his alleged lack of oversight of News International and the News of the World was due to it being “less than 1% of our company”. This self-portrayal, however, as a hands-off proprietor is entirely at odds with numerous other accounts, including those of previous editors and from Rebekah Brooks, who told us she spoke to Rupert Murdoch regularly and ‘on average, every other day’. It was, indeed, we consider, a misleading account of his involvement and influence with his newspapers.
I now come to the additional finding on which the committee divided and led the four Conservative members to dissent form the report as it stood. By a majority of 6 votes to 4 with the chairman as is custom abstaining unless he vote is tied the Committee concluded
229. On the basis of the facts and evidence before the Committee, we conclude that, if at all relevant times Rupert Murdoch did not take steps to become fully informed about phone-hacking, he turned a blind eye and exhibited wilful blindness to what was going on in his companies and publications. This culture, we consider, permeated from the top throughout the organisation and speaks volumes about the lack of effective corporate governance at News Corporation and News International. We conclude, therefore, that Rupert Murdoch is not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company.
And it has to be stressed it is only the additional sentence at the end which provoked the dissent. The issue is that there was no prior specific discussion about the fitness issue which is a question for another independent statutory body Ofcom to consider whenever such an issue appears appropriate. However whether there was specific discussion or not the rest of the report with the main points quoted leads to such a conclusion.
Tom Watson was fully justified by what had been discussed at Committee and what had been said at Leveson together with his knowledge of what was happening in relation to the Civil action together with the number of arrests to launch forth in the way he did. It is unfortunate that it coincided with the Local authority Elections and with the revelations regarding the behaviour of the Culture Minister and his personal adviser.
But as every also agreed at the Committee is only a chapter in what will prove several years before the book is completed. Meanwhile the other shareholders and the British and US public should make it is plan the Murdoch should relinquish there executive powers over their holdings in the companies.
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