New arrests in phone hacking scandal

News of the World publisher News International has established a multimillion-pound fund to compensate the victims of phone-hacking by the newspaper.

The fund, said to be in the region of £15 million, is part of an offer made to the High Court in order to resolve a number of civil claims made against the News of the World.

The list of claimants is now said to include actress Sienna Miller and former Sky Sports football pundit Andy Gray.

In an apology published in the newspaper, News International said: “We hope to be able to pay appropriate compensation to all these individuals, and have asked our lawyers to set up a compensation scheme to deal with genuine claims fairly and efficiently.”

Robert Beveridge, lecturer in Media Policy & Regulation at Edinburgh Napier University, told The Journal this is “just damage limitation, there needs to be a proper judicial enquiry”.

The news comes as recently-sacked assistant editor Ian Edmondson was arrested along with chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck on 5 April on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications and unlawfully intercepting voicemail messages.

Edmondson and Thurlbeck are the most recent names to be associated with the ongoing scandal after voluntarily appearing at separate police stations in South West London.

These are the latest developments in the affair that dates back to November 2005 when the News of the World published a story about a knee injury suffered by Prince William.

Three members of the Royal staff complained to Scotland Yard after concluding that the only way the newspaper could have known about the injury was by listening to the Prince’s voicemail.

The complaints led to an inquiry and the subsequent arrest of the newspaper’s royal editor Clive Goodman. 
Goodman was jailed in 2007 after admitting to illegally accessing the voicemail messages of a number of people.

In a statement released last week, the Press Complaints Commission’s Phone Hacking Review Committee said: “Phone hacking among journalists, even in the past, raises clear issues about journalistic ethics. The PCC will play its part in acting vigorously to deal with it, in regard to both the News of the World and the industry as a whole.”