London:
Prime Minister David Cameron went before a loud and rowdy session of Parliament on Wednesday to offer a spirited defence of his record in Britain's phone hacking scandal. For the first time, he seemed to distance himself from a former tabloid editor he had hired to work in 10 Downing Street.
Mr. Cameron's appearance before a special sitting of the House of Commons offered one more remarkable moment of passion and spectacle, following the appearance on Tuesday of Rupert Murdoch, one of the world's most powerful media moguls, and his son James, who were both questioned by British legislators for nearly three hours.
The Murdochs' appearance - made yet more dramatic by a protester's attack on Rupert Murdoch with a plate of shaving cream - did not seem on Wednesday to have come close to answering many of the questions the father and son faced about phone hacking in the British outpost of their media empire in 2002.
Indeed, one of the two parliamentary panels investigating the widening scandal released a scathing report on Wednesday accusing Murdoch companies of "deliberate attempts" to thwart its investigations, and said police inquiries had been a "catalog of failures" in investigating the issue.
The events played out against a backdrop of huge public revulsion over the central allegation that
The News of the World, the tabloid that Mr. Murdoch closed down earlier this month, had ordered a private investigator to hack the voice mail of Milly Dowler, a 13-year-old girl abducted and murdered in 2002. So great is the interest in the affair that the
BBC devoted live television coverage on Wednesday to what it said was the Murdochs' executive jet flying out of Luton airport north of London. Its destination was not announced.
The gathering of so many emotional issues, laced with big money deals, tabloid scandal and long-running British suspicion of the Murdoch machine, has crystallised into the most serious crisis of credibility and confidence of Mr. Cameron's 15 months in office - a crisis in which he seemed to be trying on Wednesday to regain some of the initiative seized earlier by the Labour Opposition leader, Ed Miliband.
On Wednesday, Mr. Cameron switched to the offensive, challenging Mr. Miliband to detail his party's links and encounters with the Murdoch family, which were widely known under former Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown before the Murdochs' daily tabloid,
The Sun, shifted its support to Mr. Cameron before the May 2010 election.
He said all political parties had cozied up to media barons for years, seeking their electoral support. "The clock has stopped on my watch and we need to sort it out," he said, calling for a new relationships between the press and politicians.
Mr. Cameron returned home early from an African trade tour late on Tuesday to face questions about his own relationships with former senior figures at News International, the British subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch's global News Corporation, particularly his choice of a former Murdoch employee, Andy Coulson, as his director of communications.
Mr. Coulson, who was editor of
The News of the World when some of the phone hacking took place, resigned from the Prime Minister's office in January and was among 10 people who were arrested in the affair.
Referring to his decision to hire Mr. Coulson, Mr. Cameron said, "I regret and I am extremely sorry about the furor it has caused."
"With 20-20 hindsight and all that has followed," he said, "I would not have offered him the job and I expect that he wouldn't have taken it. But you don't make decisions in hindsight, you make them in the present. You live and you learn and, believe you me, I have learned."
He added that Mr. Coulson had been properly vetted before joining his staff and had given "assurances" that he had not been involved in phone hacking.
It was the closest Mr. Cameron has come to an apology, and seemed to show that the prime minister was distancing himself from his former aide.
But Mr. Cameron continued to defend Mr. Coulson's work as director of communications and said he had "an old-fashioned view about innocence until proven guilty." If it is proved that Mr. Coulson lied to him, he said, "that will be the moment for a profound apology."
"It was my decision" to hire Mr. Coulson, Mr. Cameron said, "and I take responsibility."
Mr. Miliband, the leader of the Labour Opposition, responded by saying Mr. Cameron's position had been compromised by his association with Mr. Coulson. "Why doesn't he do more than give a half-apology?" Mr. Miliband asked.
Referring to Mr. Cameron, Mr. Miliband said: "He says in hindsight he made a mistake by hiring Mr. Coulson. He says if Mr. Coulson lied to him, he would apologise. That isn't good enough. It's not about hindsight, it's not about whether Mr. Coulson lied to him. It's about all the information and warnings the prime minister ignored. He was warned and he preferred to ignore the warnings."
Mr. Cameron was questioned repeatedly about a
New York Times investigation into
The News of the World that was published in September 2010.
"There was no information in
The New York Times September 2010 article to make me change my mind about Mr. Coulson," Mr. Cameron said.
The article found that hacking was widespread, and quoted two former
News of the World journalists as saying that phone hacking was discussed in Mr. Coulson's presence.
One of the former journalists, Sean Hoare, who was found dead this week at his home of unexplained causes, was quoted on the record as saying that Mr. Coulson encouraged him to do it.
Shortly after the Times article was published, an Opposition Labour lawmaker, Tom Watson, said he raised his concerns about Mr. Coulson with Mr. Cameron in a letter but never received a reply.
Mr. Miliband noted that the article led the police to reopen their investigation. Why, Mr. Miliband asked, did alarm bells not ring in the Prime Minister's office?
Mr. Cameron also was asked why, following the article's publication, his chief of staff, Ed Llewellyn, declined to be briefed by police officials. Mr. Cameron said Mr. Llewellyn had not acted improperly in turning down the offer.
"Ed Llewellyn's reply to the police made clear that it would not be appropriate to give me or my staff any privileged briefing. The reply that he sent was cleared in advance by my permanent secretary, Jeremy Heywood. Just imagine if they had done the opposite and asked for, or acquiesced in receiving, privileged information - even if there was no intention to use it," Mr. Cameron said.
"There would have been quite justified outrage," he said. "To risk any perception that No. 10 was seeking to influence a sensitive police investigation in any way would have been completely wrong."
He also said there had been no breach of regulations when his government was considering a $12 billion bid by the Murdoch family to assume full control of Britain's biggest satellite broadcaster.
The Murdochs have since withdrawn the bid for
British Sky Broadcasting under strong political pressure. Mr. Cameron said he had had no "inappropriate conversations" with News Corporation executives about the bid at the time it seemed likely to be approved by his government.
Mr. Cameron also said that "to the best of my knowledge" he had not known that Mr. Coulson had had consultations with another former
News of the World executive, Neil Wallis, who has also been arrested. Mr. Wallis had not been employed by or contracted by his Conservative party, Mr. Cameron said.
British political analysts said that, with his appearance in Parliament on Wednesday, Mr. Cameron was seeking to draw a line under the crisis - at least for the time being - as Parliament goes into summer recess until September 5 and many lawmakers leave the capital for vacations or their home areas outside London. Mr. Cameron appealed for cross-party cooperation in facing the crisis. "Over the past two weeks, a torrent of revelations and allegations has engulfed some of this country's most important institutions. It has shaken people's trust in the media and the legality of what they do, in the police and their ability to investigate media malpractice, and, yes, in politics and in politicians' ability to get to grips with these issues," he said.
"People desperately want us to put a stop to the illegal practices, to ensure the independence and effectiveness of the police and to establish a more healthy relationship between politicians and media owners," he said.
"The public want us to work together to sort this problem out," he said, "because until we do so it will not be possible to get back to the issues they care about even more, getting our economy moving, creating jobs, helping with the cost of living, protecting them from terrorism, restoring fairness to our welfare and immigration systems."