Out-Law / Your Daily Need-To-Know

Out-Law News 3 min. read

High Court allows judicial review into Met handling of phone hacking case


The High Court has backed a judicial review into how a newspaper phone hacking scandal was investigated by London's Metropolitan Police (the Met) and whether any failure in that investigation breached the right to privacy of alleged victims.

The review has been ordered in the cases of freelance journalist Brendan Montague; former Scotland Yard deputy assistant commissioner Brian Paddick; Labour MP Chris Bryant, and former deputy prime minister John Prescott. They all believe they were the victims of phone-hacking by the News of the World.

The review will investigate whether or not the Met's actions in 2005 and 2006 when the allegations first surfaced constituted a breach of the men's rights to privacy under the Human Rights Act.

In January The Met reopened its investigation into phone hacking saying it had received "significant new information" about cases. The Met has since gone on to identify a number of high-profile people, including actress Sienna Miller, as having been hacked by the paper.

The Met's original investigation led to the prosecution of private investigator Glenn Mulcaire and News of the World royal correspondent Clive Goodman. The pair were jailed in 2007 for hacking into the phones of royal staff.

Montague, Paddick, Bryant and Prescott believe that the Met violated their right to privacy by not investigating whether their phones had been hacked by the paper during its original investigation in 2006, the court papers said. The UK Human Rights Act implements the European Convention on Human Rights and guarantees a person's right to a private life.

The High Court decision, taken by Mr Justice Foskett, overturned the ruling taken by a judge in February to reject the men's' application for a full hearing. The judge said that the men's' case was not "unarguable".

"Having had the benefit of more extensive argument on the overall issue of the potential engagement [of a person's right to privacy] than was available to [the previous judge when he made his ruling], I am not, as presently advised, prepared to characterise the issue as unarguable," Mr Justice Foskett said in his ruling.

The judge rejected the Met's argument that a judicial review was pointless now that the four men had been told what information had been discovered about them and that the investigation had been reopened.

"I do not accept that it can be said at this stage of the proceedings that the claims are academic," Mr Justice Foskett said.

"The focus is on what ... should have been done in 2005/2006 [during the original investigation], not on whether what has been conveyed to the [four men] recently is a sufficient discharge of any continuing obligation that exists towards them under [their right to privacy]. If a breach of their [right to privacy] is established, they seek a declaration to that effect and 'just satisfaction'," the judge said.

The Met argued that new revelations about the men's' potential phone hacking only came about because the police had been unable to process the information at the time of the original investigation using computers. The judge said that this was not a reason to discard the men's' case for a judicial review now.

The four men argue that the Met had a duty to investigate phone hacking against them during the original investigation but the Met says that it had no such duty to do so. The judge said the men's' case was "arguable".

"It is, of course, entirely possible that this is the rock upon which these claims will founder. However, until the full extent of the way in which the 'decision [not to investigate], if made' was arrived at is deployed evidentially, the court will not be in a position to determine whether the discretion was exercised lawfully and on proper grounds," Mr Justice Foskett said.

The judge said that he would not wait for the Met's full investigation to conclude before beginning the judicial review process and rejected the Met's claim that the issues at a judicial hearing would be complex.

"The issues seem to me to be capable of being argued without delving too deeply into the intricacies of the original investigation," Mr Justice Foskett said.

"But whether that is so or not, I cannot turn [the four men] away from the court simply because [the Met] asserts that there are factual issues to consider: many judicial review claims involve consideration of a complex factual scenario. However, that will be an issue for the judge dealing with the substantive application to consider," the judge said.
The judge described Montague's case as "threadbare" but allowed his evidence to be considered at a full hearing.

"I am prepared to grant permission to Mr Bryant, Mr Paddick and Lord Prescott to apply for judicial review," Mr Justice Foskett said in his ruling.

"Mr Montague ... has raised at least a ... case from which it might be inferred that his mobile telephone communications were intercepted by someone acting for or on behalf of the News of the World ... and it is possible that some support for that may emerge in the course of the continuing police investigation," the judge said.

The judge described his decision to allow Montague's evidence to be considered at a judicial hearing as "purely pragmatic" and said that it was up to Montague's advisers, as well as Prescott, Bryant and Paddick, to monitor the merits of their case as new evidence becomes available.

We are processing your request. \n Thank you for your patience. An error occurred. This could be due to inactivity on the page - please try again.