IN A humiliating climbdown, Rupert Murdoch, chairman of News Corporation, has accepted a summons to appear before a House of Commons inquiry next week, along with his son James and his top British executive Rebekah Brooks.
Mr Murdoch snr had earlier refused to appear before the Commons culture, media and sport committee, saying he would give evidence to the sworn public inquiry under Lord Justice Leveson, while his son offered to appear in August.
Unlike the Murdochs, Ms Brooks accepted the invitation but warned she may not be able to answer many of the MPs' questions because of the police investigation into phone-hacking by the News of the World.
The climbdown is but one signal that the once omnipotent media magnate and News Corporation are in disarray – News International’s top UK legal adviser Tom Crone, for example, left on Wednesday.
The media and sport committee played a game of bluff with the Murdochs. Although it has the power to summon witnesses, it can no longer employ 400-year-old punishments for those who refuse to attend.
MPs do not have the power to summon foreign citizens living outside the UK. However, if Mr Murdoch snr had taken advantage of this loophole, he would have had to leave the country. His son James is understood to have both American and British citizenship.
The committee hearing is likely to be one of the most-watched for decades. However, MPs must be careful not to prejudice the police investigation, while the Murdochs and Ms Brooks will be extremely guarded in their replies.
Meanwhile, it emerged that Neil Wallis, the former News of the Worlddeputy editor arrested yesterday by police, had been hired by police commissioner Paul Stephenson as a communications adviser from October 2009 for a year.
The family of Brazilian man Jean Charles de Menezes, who was shot dead at Stockwell tube station in 2005 by British police, said a telephone used by the dead man’s cousin was on the list of 4,000 names kept by the newspaper’s private investigator Glenn Mulcaire.
Commissioner Stephenson is now under pressure for hiring Mr Wallis and for having dinner with him in 2006, when he was deputy commissioner and when Met detectives were investigating the paper’s royal correspondent Clive Goodman and Mr Mulcaire, who were both later jailed.
Last night the commissioner insisted his integrity was “completely intact”. In a statement, the Metropolitan Police said Mr Wallis had given strategic communication advice and had written speeches while a senior public affairs officials was on sick leave.
Mr Wallis was still under contract to the Met when deputy assistant commissioner John Yates decided not to reopen the investigation into the News of the World after allegations that a large number of people had been hacked. However, sources denied that Mr Wallis knew anything about Mr Yates’s decision.
Meanwhile, there were signals that News International could be ready to launch the Sun on Sunday– its mooted replacement for the News of the World– within weeks, though launching a new title in the current febrile environment would be a major marketing challenge.
