A dramatic day already in the Commons, and the AV debate has only just begun. Theresa May has just been forced to answer an urgent question from Labour’s Tom Watson on the allegations of phone hacking at the News of the World.
During that session, Tom Watson made a prety extraordinary claim: that Tony Blair has written to the Met to ask if he was a victim of phone hacking.
In one way, this shouldn’t be surprising – Tony Blair was the highest-profile public figure at the time, and it is only natural that he should at least ask whether he was on as list found by investigators back in 2006 belonging to the private investigator Glenn Mulcaire. After all, if John Prescott, his deputy, believes he was hacked, why shouldn’t Blair?
On the other hand, most of the people who have written to the Met so far to ask if their details were found in the original investigation had real reason to do so – stories may have appeared about them that couldn’t otherwise be explained or they may have had information from their phone companies.
So was Blair hacked? The Met will not respond, and I’m waiting to hear from Blair’s people if he has in fact written to the police on the matter, and what grounds he had for doing so.
Of course, this could all be political game-playing by Tom Watson (Andy Coulson, right, was editor of the NotW at the time and is now Cameron’s chief spinner). After all, point out Mr Coulson’s allies, you could play the “who has been hacked?” game with anyone – even the Pope.
Jim Pickard
Kiran Stacey