PHONE HACKING was "a bog standard" tool that was used daily by reporters at the Daily Mirrorin 1999, a former business journalist later jailed for breaches of share-trading laws yesterday told the Leveson Inquiry.
James Hipwell, who co-wrote the popular City Slickers business column at the time until he was fired in 2000 for tipping companies in which he held shares, claimed one Mirrorjournalist had hacked into editor Piers Morgan's own mobile in front of him to get details about his case.
“It didn’t seem to me to be an ethical way to behave, but it seemed to be a generally accepted method to get a story.
“It seemed to be perfectly acceptable to some of the Mirror’s senior editors, and I saw it on a daily basis in 1999, especially the latter half of 1999.
"I would go as far as to say that it happened every day, and that it became apparent that a great number of the Mirror'sshowbusiness stories would come from that source," he told the inquiry.
In a written statement, Mr Hipwell, whose appeal against his shares-manipulation conviction, which led to him serving several months in jail, was rejected in 2007, said phone hacking “seemed to be common on other newspapers” as well.
"On one occasion, I heard members of the Mirrorteam joking about having deleted a message from a celebrity's voicemail in order to ensure that no journalists from the Sunwould get the same scoop by hacking in and hearing it themselves," he went on.
On Tuesday, Mr Morgan repeatedly denied that he had sanctioned phone hacking during his nine-year term as editor of the popular daily tabloid, or that he was aware that anyone else on the newspaper was involved in it.
However, he did admit to listening to a voicemail message left by singer Sir Paul McCartney for his then wife, Heather Mills, implying that Ms Mills had been the one to have given it to him.
Yesterday, however, she firmly denied this. “For the avoidance of doubt, I can categorically state that I have never ever played Piers Morgan a tape of any kind, never mind a voice message from my ex-husband,” she declared.
Meanwhile, two key figures in the scandal had very different days in court yesterday, with private investigator Glenn Mulcaire forcing News International (NI) to continue paying his legal bills, while the former News of the Worldeditor Andy Coulson failed.
Chancellor of the High Court Sir Andrew Morritt said NI’s subsidiary, News Group Newspapers, had signed a valid contract of indemnity with Mr Mulcaire in June 2010, by which it agreed to indemnify him from the costs and damages arising from voicemail litigation to which they were joint defendants, and the company had no right to end the contract, which continued to exist.
In Mr Coulson’s case the judge ruled that a February 2007 severance agreement did not cover the levelling of criminal allegations against Mr Coulson personally and if criminal allegations were covered, no such proceedings had yet started.
