NEWS CORPORATION'S Rupert Murdoch has refused to accept responsibility for the News of the Worldphone-hacking scandal, insisting that he had been misled by "the people that I trusted and then, maybe, the people they trusted".
Mr Murdoch was attacked by a man with a shaving foam pie near the end of his almost three hours of evidence, given with his son James, a fellow News Corporation executive, in the House of Commons to the culture, media and sport committee.
It emerged during questioning that the News of the Worldhas continued to pay the legal bills of private investigator Glenn Mulcaire for hacking in 2007 – though Mr Murdoch jnr insisted this had been done on legal advice and because Mr Mulcaire was a co-defendant in civil cases.
During his evidence, Mr Murdoch snr was repeatedly shown not to be in command of the detail of the News of the World’s operations, leading him to admit that the defunct tabloid “was just 1 per cent of the company’s operations”.
Seeking initially to be conciliatory, Mr Murdoch, who was accompanied to the meeting by his wife, Wendi, interrupted his son at one point to declare that “today is the most humble day of my life”.
However, he defended his achievements: “My company has 52,000 employees. I have led it for 57 years and I have made my share of mistakes. I have lived in many countries, employed thousands of honest and hard-working journalists, owned nearly 200 newspapers.
"At no time do I remember being as sickened as when I heard what the Dowler family had to endure, nor do I recall being as angry as when I was told that the News of the Worldcould have compounded their distress. I want to thank the Dowlers for graciously giving me the opportunity to apologise in person."
Prime minister David Cameron, who has struggled in recent weeks over his decision to hire former News of the Worldeditor Andy Coulson as his communications chief in 2007, received a further blow last night.
It emerged yesterday that former News of the Worlddeputy editor Neil Wallis, who worked as a part-time PR strategist for the Metropolitan police, was an adviser to Mr Coulson and by extension to the Conservatives before the 2010 general election.
Downing Street, embarrassed to learn only now of Mr Wallis’s involvement, last night insisted that Mr Wallis had not been paid and had offered advice for one week on how the Tories, in late 2009, could get tabloid coverage.
Earlier, No 10 was forced by Scotland Yard’s former counter-terrorism head John Yates to explain its decision to refuse a briefing last September on phone-hacking, just days after a New York Times report on the issue.
Replying to Mr Yates, Mr Cameron’s chief-of-staff Ed Llewellyn said they wanted “to be able to be entirely clear, for your sake and ours, that we have not been in contact with you about this subject”, adding that it would not be appropriate to raise it with Mr Cameron.
Opponents of News International last night pointed to the disclosure yesterday that one in four of the Metropolitan police’s press office staff are former employees of the company, or else spent time there as interns.
