Leveson: MPs ‘will not bottle’ hacking reforms

MPs will deal robustly with phone-hacking and will not “bottle” the issue, Liberal Democrat deputy leader Simon Hughes has told the Leveson Inquiry.

Mr Hughes, whose own phone was hacked, said time will be set aside for legislation to be passed, if necessary, in the next parliamentary session. “Parliament will absolutely not bottle it and we mustn’t run away from it,” he told the inquiry.

Police informed the MP in October 2006 that his phone was hacked by private investigator Glenn Mulcaire.

Mr Hughes questioned why phone-hacking was allowed to continue for so long after it came to light, and argued that the suffering of later victims could have been avoided.

He told the inquiry: “If there had been robust action in 2006, a lot of the illegal activity might have been shut down, stopped, as it would have been dealt with, and a lot of people who are now known to be victims, they might not have been victims or might not have suffered as much.”

Lord Justice Leveson agreed: “There were several witnesses whose lives, it seemed from the evidence and from the facts, have been very dramatically affected by that delay.”

Mr Hughes said his chances of becoming Lib Dem leader were ruined when the Sun revealed in January 2006 he had used a gay phone chatline.

He recalled that a Sun journalist told him before the story ran that the paper had “come by” records of his telephone calls.

Before the revelations he had been favourite to replace Charles Kennedy as his party’s leader, but afterwards his poll ratings dropped and he lost the leadership election, the inquiry heard.

Mr Hughes told the hearing that police failed to tell him that Mulcaire had his address, home phone number and the personal details of his friends within his notebooks.