Labour leadership contenders Ed Balls and Ed Miliband said David Cameron’s judgment was being called into question after claims the former newspaper’s editor, Andy Coulson, now No 10’s head of communications, had personally asked at least one member of staff to tap into someone’s phone.
Balls called on Home Secretary Theresa May to make a statement to the House of Commons, while Ed Miliband said Downing Street should issue a “specific response” to the allegations, and warned: “Until that happens, a cloud will hang over both Andy Coulson and indeed the government, because this is the man in charge of the Downing Street media machine.”
But the Tories accused Labour of seizing on a story, published in the New York Times on Tuesday, to stir up political trouble. In a series of media appearances, Alan Duncan, a minister of state in the Department for International Development, suggested the article was motivated by the paper’s rivalry with the Wall Street Journal, which is owned by News of the World boss Rupert Murdoch.
He said: “The Wall Street Journal is at war with the New York Times and, on the back of that dispute in the States, the Labour Party has piled in to attack Andy Coulson about something that happened years ago. This was looked at by the News International lawyers, by a Parliamentary Select Committee, by the police and the Crown Prosecution Service, and all of them concluded that there was no case to answer.”
News of the World reporter Clive Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire were jailed in 2007 for hacking into voicemail messages but the newspaper has always insisted this was an isolated case.
The New York Times has now quoted former reporters at the paper claiming that the practice was more widespread, and that the then editor knew about it.
