Leveson inquiry: Hugh Grant gives evidence – live
Live coverage as the actor and murdered schoolgirl’s parents become the first alleged phone-hacking victims to give evidence
Link to video live material at http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/blog/2011/nov/21/leveson-inquiry-hugh-grant-dowlers-live
3.01pm: Most of Grant’s attack today appears aimed at the Daily Mail.
3.00pm: Grant says the Mail used “brinkmanship” to try and “stand up the story” about the birth of his baby by warning him they were going to publish the story the next day.
He believes they didn’t publish it because he didn’t confirm the story and they would have been reluctant to do so on the basis of leaked information from the hospital.
2.57pm:“I was very reluctant to be present at birth because of danger of leak from hospital bringing the press storm down on mother of child”.
He explains that Ting Lan Hong was very happy with this and was there with her mother and a female cousin.
“On the day afterwards, I couldn’t resist a quick visit.
But the day after the phone calls started. The Daily Mail rang saying “we know about Ting Lan”.
“All my fears about leak seem to have been justified.”
He agrees that the Daily Mail didn’t break the story, they waited it until it broke in America.
2.55pm: Grant says in his experience if he had phoned the police about a burglary or other incident, the paparazzi would show up at his door before they did.
“All I know is for a number of years if someone like me called police for a burglary, a mugging or something happened to me chances are that aphotographer or reporter would turn up before a policeman. Whether you call that supposition or fact I don’t know.”
2.53pm: It seemed to Grant that this was a fishing expedition and that the Mail didn’t want to print a story solely on the word of some snoop at the hospital.
Grant then refers to the now notorious night when he appeared on Question Time to discuss phone hacking and Ting Lan Hong got a menacing call telling her to ‘Tell Hugh Grant to shut the fuck up’.
He didn’t pursue it at the time because he was afraid of leaks from the police to the press.
2.51pm: Grant says he held off the paparazzi for quite a time because the papers didn’t have anything to link her to him until he visited the hospital after the birth.
Then “the dam was breached”, says Grant.
They knew the fake name she had checked into hospital and he was inundated with calls.
“In this case, it was the Daily Mail that seemed to have all the details, the fake name etc.”
2.48pm: The hearing is now referring to a News of the World front page story: Happy Easter” which was published on 24 April this year in relation to the mother of his child.
It includes a photo taken by telephoto lens that he was not aware was being taken. Nor was not asked to comment on the article that accompanied with the article.
Asked if he had been contacted what would he have said. “Nothing,” he said.
2.47pm: Grants says he is curious to know how a story obtained possibly through hacking commissioned by the News of the World appeared in in the Mail and the Mirror.
2.45pm: Grant was told by police that his phone had been hacked and was shown the notes private investigator Glenn Mulcaire kept on him. The notes he was shown included reference
to stories that had been in the Daily Mirror and the Daily Mail.
But the ‘corner names’ on Glenn Mulcaire’s notes were redacted.
“Subsequently, I was very interested to see who had commissioned the hacking.”
2.44pm: Grant has said he would prefer if the tape of his “revenge” interview with McMullen was not played in the inquiry.
I feel like I did a revenge number on Paul McMullen and that’s the issue closed with him. Two separate police inquiries have asked me for the tape and I’ve refused it seems too harsh. I don’t want to be sending Paul McMullen to prison.
2.39pm: Grant is asked not to speculate and to stick with evidence.
He is asked what was the evidence that the Mail had been involved in phone hacking?
He said his evidence was the earlier story he referred to in relation to the plummy voiced studio executive and McMullen’s evidence.
Turning to the McMullen evidence, Jay says this relates to payment for a photo, not phone hacking.
2.36pm: Grant turned the tables on McMullen who is now running a pub.
He wrote about his encounter in the New Statesman.
The article was much discussed when it was published this April.
“In this week’s New Statesman, the actor Hugh Grant secretly records the former News of the World journalist Paul McMullan discussing phone-hacking and David Cameron’s relationship with the Murdochs and News International,” it started.
2.33pm: he is now talking about a chance encounter with the News of the World journalist Paul McMullen.
He had broken down in the motorway in Kent and someone approached him to help him, but it turned out to be a photograph.
Grant was initially hostile towards him but Grant needed to get his appointment and finally agreed to take a lift from McMullen.
The next time Grant saw McMullen, he secretly recorded him.
2.32pm: It was back in 2004 and Grant says the officer had discussed blagging – the practice of obtaining official information by deceit
2.31pm: There seems to be some confusion now about what discussion the officer may have had with him.
2.28pm: He recalls being told by a policeman about an investigator who had details in his notes about Grant and was working for virtually every newspaper.
“He came to my house, sat in my kitchen and told me they had arrested a private investigator whose notebook contained intimate details on a number of people and I was one of them.”
It is suggested by Jay that this is the report by the information commissioner.
2.27pm: Hugh Grant says there are two types of photographers – staff photographers who show “a modicum of decency” and criminal paparazzi.
The police have told me they are increasingly recruited from the criminal classes who will stop at nothing because the bounty on these photos is very high.
He says there are paps who take pictures of girls up their skirts and digitally remove their underwear.
He suspects they are also the paps who tailed Princess Diana.
2.25pm: He talks about two former girlfriend, both of whom now have children.
Both were harassed by paparazzi who would take pictures of them at petrol stations etc who would then sell them to the papers.
2.24pm: Grant says he suspects someone at the hospital sold the information to the newspapers.
He mentions his new baby for the first time.
I suspect that it was age old system of someone at hospital being on a retainer from tabloid or picture agency – quite sure in my opinion is that was the source as it was again recently in the case of my baby.
2.18pm: The inquiry is now discussing a visit by Grant to Chelsea and Westminster hospital in March this year. He says he is happy to discuss the details.
Grant ended up in the A&E.
Robert Jay puts it to him that the article is positive “[It is] saying, here is a famous man, he didn’t pull rank, he didn’t complain. It all reflects rather well on you.”
Grant interjects and says this is not the way he sees it.
The classic tabloid technique to cover up an egregious breach of privacy is to wrap it up in a rather nice story.
Complaint that I was dizzy and short of breath and these are his medical records and should not have been shared, yet they were “deliberately dressed that up as an article about how undiva-ish I was.”
2.16pm: Grant says he fails entirely to understand why the distribution of an individual’s medical records does not come under the remit of the PCC. Jay said it did.
2.14pm: Robert Jay, on behalf of Leveson is going through the witness statement Grant has submitted and now refers to privacy claims in relation to a visit Grant made to Charing Cross Hospital.
It did culminate in a claim against the Mirror for a breach of confidence.
He also complained to the PCC and that claim was upheld
2.13pm: Hugh Grant alleges that the only way the Mail on Sunday could have got that story was phone-hacking.
He has been told this is the first time the Mail on Sunday has been linked to phone hacking and this remains speculation.
Grant says he would like to ask the barrister representing Associated Newspapers, Jonathan Caplan
2.10pm: Grant is talking about the Mail on Sunday running an article in February 2007 saying his relationship with Jemima Khan was on the rocks because of his late night calls with a plummy voiced studio executive from Warner Brothers.
He sued and won and damages were won.
“I was thinking how they could have come up with with this bizarre story.”
He realised it was an assistant of a great friend Hollywood executive.
Leveson inquiry: Hugh Grant gives evidence
2.09pm: Robert Jay suggests it could be the police or a burglar acting for a paper. Leveson says it could also have been an opportunistic burglar who realises he can make some money once he or she has been in his flat.
2.06pm: Hugh Grant now volunteers to talk about his arrest in 1995 in Los Angeles in relation to Divine Brown. He said he was fully expecting press following the event.
Shortly afterwards when he came back his flat had been broken into.
The front door had been shoved off its hinges.
Nothing had been stolen, which was weird…
Shortly after that a detailed account of what the interior of my flat looked like appeared in one of the papers.
I remember thinking who told them that – was that the burglar, or was that the police?
Following success of Four Weddings and a Funeral in 1994, the press was favourable but then it plummeted.
The nation liked having a film that was popular and funny and doing very well all over the world and I got a little blip of positive press on the back of that.”
There was a great deal suddenly in my private life, particularly in the beginning, the premier of that film.
2.04pm: Hugh Grant is now taking the stand.
It was the raw moment of euphoria when Sally Dowler calls Milly’s phone and discovers that some of her voicemails had been deleted.
“She’s picked up her voicemails, Bob, she’s alive.”
The voicemails had apparently been deleted to make way for new ones.
1.33pm: While the Leveson inquiry has been hearing from the first victims of press intrusion, Labour’s shadow media spokeswoman, Helen Goodman, has held a public meeting for pressure groups to give their view on media reform.
She said:
I was delighted to welcome the diverse and wide-ranging groups that we met with today. These groups came from many different parts of our community, however they all have one thing in common: they feel that they are routinely treated unfairly by the press. I am urging as many groups as possible to submit evidence to the Leveson inquiry, as this is a once in a generation opportunity where we can seek to create the kind of press that the British public want and need.
1pm: Here is a lunchtime summary of today’s evidence so far:
• The parents of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler told the Leveson inquiry of the moment when they were given false hope that Milly was alive and picking up her voicemail messages. “She’s picked up her voicemail, Bob, she’s alive,” Sally Dowler said on the day she could get into Milly’s voicemails. But it was allegedly the News of the World who had picked up her messages.
• Bob Dowler suggested that his own phone or the family’s home phone was targeted by the News of the World’s private investigator Glenn Mulcaire.
• The author Joan Smith told how she was targeted as “collateral damage” because of her former relationship with Labour MP Dennis McShane
• Graham Shear, lawyer of several high-profile figures, told how his clients were targeted in a “revenge-fuelled fervour” by newspapers if they dared take on the press.
12.50pm: The Leveson inquiry has now taken a break and will resume at 2pm, when Hugh Grant will take the stand.
12.40pm: But Shear says the internet can also be a tool that can be used to mediate and to moderate.
12.37pm: Shear has had three cases involving information distributed on the interent, viral rumours or otherwise.
They have all had different consequences and dynamics to them. It’s an extremely difficult problem to confront.
His first case – the Grosvenor House case – was subject to huge speculation and a lot of it was undertaken among people emailing or on blogs. It is extremely difficult to prevent identification or focus on the internet.
In that case, we made it very clear to large organisations that they should not condone defamatory emails being passed in their organisation.
We did manage to prevent some of the fallout using that technique.
12.36pm: Leveson is now asking Shear about the internet and its role in invasion of privacy.
12.35pm: Shear is now outdoing barrister David Sherborne as the voice of “victims”.
He has been delivering a measured analysis of the tabloid press and their behaviour over the last 10 years for almost an hour now.
12.33pm: The Guardian’s Esther Addley has tweeted this:
12.32pm: Shear, who has acted for Ashley Cole and many other Premiership footballers and stars including Robbie Williams in the past, said:
I think people [on tabloids] had lost their ethical compass.
12.29pm: Leveson is now leading the questioning of Shear.
He says the tabloids became “almost untouchable” and there was “a fever pitch of trying to find more and more details” between 2003 and 2009 without any recognition of privacy.
Since 2009 this fever-pitched interest in private lives has receded, says Shear.
“Whether it’s temporary because of this inquiry only time will tell.”
“If all that comes out of this, is a more effective body” that investigates and trains our media that would be a very good thing.
Lord justice Leveson
12.24pm: Shear says to hear the News of the World talk about footballer hypocrisy when they might have had an affair when they were themselves breaking the law was the “ultimate hypocrisy”.
To hear [News of the World journalists] constantly saying your clients are role models and they’ve acted as a hypocrite and to hear that from senior journalists, and the editors, be that from features or sports or whatever and, hearing it over and over that my clients had been hypocrites … and to then learn of the activities of the News of the World while they have been supposing to expose the hypocrisies, that they had been acting unlawfully is the ultimate in hypocrisy in my view.
12.23pm: Shear says actors and footballers have the right to privacy just like everyone else.
There are those who make their living from their on screen persona and have to suport that living with marketing activity, such in the case of actors and actresss.
But we do know them?
No, we know their on-screen persona. I believe they are still entitled to a private life and the same goes for professional footballers.
12.18pm: Shear says newspapers consider the battle on the privacy front as “not just an ongoing battle but a war”.
Without naming papers, Shear says the press seek “to vilify the high court judges” who have heard these cases of target people involved in these cases later on.
Robert Jay refers to a number of high profile cases have gone through the courts in the past 10 years on privacy including a test case brought by Naomi Campbell.
12.16pm: The existence of a CFA arrangement might encourage a newspaper to settle earlier, suggests Robert Jay QC for the inquiry.
“Not really,” says Shear.
He says there is a “slightly strange attitude” to what is and what isn’t in the public interest.
He says the “mantra” of newspapers is “the right to publish” and they are determined to fight every case on these grounds since the incorporation of the Human Rights Act into UK law as they see this as an impediment to their right to freedom of expression.
12.16pm: He says he only takes cases that have a “better than 50% chance” of winning.
12.13pm: Shear says he has only undertaken six or seven “conditional fee arrangement” [CFA] cases in the past excluding the phone-hacking cases.
He says he only takes the cases on if they have a significant chance of winning.
12.12pm: Shear is now discussing “no win, no fee” cases.
Damages of £60,000 are no more than “a parking fine” for some newspapers, says Shear.
12.08pm: Shear is still talking about his unidentifed high-profile footballer client and the “revenge-fuelled fervour” surrounding the story.
Not only was he a general target of interest because of his ability and talent as pro sportsman – but was definitely an element of revenge-fuelled fervour.
[There] seemed to be desire to dish out retribution and determined to prove something that was damaging to his reputation or private life as part of quid pro quo of having temerity to take on national media.
12.04pm: Shear is now talking about a high-profile footballer who wanted to keep details of his private life private and got dragged into a story involving another, lesser known footballer caught up in an alleged incident in the Grosvenor House hotel.
Shear sued a newspaper on behalf of this footballer client after they were pictured alongside stories about the alleged sexual assault of a woman.
He was not identified as the “likely potential accused if you like” says Shead, but by “inference, suggestion and pictures in close proximity” to the article about the incident.
This was a high-profile event that was front-page news for some weeks….
There was so much in way of suggestion and inference his name was being bandied about as likely instigator or perpetrator.
It [his name] being traded on internet and he felt he had to come out and clear his name voluntarily.
11.59am: Shear is now talking about going to the court to seek anonymity orders of so-called “superinjunctions” to prevent his clients being named in the press.
“For us to live in a democracy … we need a strong, effective and free press. It is hard fought but almost invariably very very hard to detect a public interest [in tabloid newspapers] rather than a faint interest by public of being titillated.”
11.58am: Lily Allen tweets about the Leveson inquiry:
11.54am: Shear says newspapers have become more reluctant to contact him in relation to stories that might invade one of his clients’ privacy.
He says newspapers “calculate the benefits of publishing a story with contacting lawyer first and risks involved”.
The amount of damages paid out in the courts for libel has reduced and the damages for breaches of privacy are “relatively most” so they are reluctant to contact him in case they are “knocked off” a story that may sell newspapers.
11.51am: Shear explains how Sunday newspapers would normally contact him for comment on a Thursday or Friday.
However this has changed – newspapers are more reluctant to put stories to him pre-publication and prefer to stand back and watch the aftermath.
11.48am: Shear says the market for kiss-and-tell stories from “young ladies” who, presumably had a relationship with some of his footballer clients could get anything from between £10,000 for the most innocuous story to something like £250,000.
“Rebecca Loos [who had an affair with David Beckham] and others who have been paid very large sums for their stories,” said Shear.
Robert Jay, QC, asking questions on behalf of Leveson inquiry
From 2006 and 2007 the type of story tabloids were sicking from kiss-and-tell sources had changed he said.
11.46am: Shear says “the Press Complaints Commission is no match for the larger media organisations.”
He says it is a mediator, not a regulator.
11.39am: Shear says he believes the tabloid” business model” has “become dependent and infatuated with sensational and titillating stories”.
“The facility that phone hacking or unlawful surveillance provided allowed those that were utilising it not only to build the story but to pad it out,” says Shear.
“This provided easily digestible, sensationalist fodder on a regular basis. It’s been a progression of sort of fairly. I suppose privacy-invading, but interesting to a section of the public, intrusion not the private lives of rich and famous and powerful which has created this self-generating process that people want to see or hear of the next event.
“It was not quite as prevalent in the same sort of guise in the mid 1990s. It became more organised, more orchestrated as to turned into the early 2000s, certainly the NOW moved into the most effective story-gatherer.
“I think the type of surveillance that were undertaken were unlikely to have been isolated to one newspaper.”
11.37am: Shear explains that meetings with police over phone-hacking has become a “regular” occurrence and then he was told his own phone had been intercepted.
Mulcaire’s notes had details of a client for whom he was acting on a regulatory matter.
This may be an issue in upcoming civil proceedings, Robert Jay QC says.
It was some surprise that in the early parts of this year that Iw as contacted by officers from Operation Weeting who asked to come and see me to talk to me about a number of clients who did appear in evidence being reviews.
They came to me and started to come through the process
11.34am: Shear says he asked the clients in 2007 would they like to take the matter further and report the intrusion to the information commission.
“A number of them indicated that they did, some didn’t because they felt they could suffer recrimination”, said Shear.
11.32am: Shear remembers being in the countryside at his house and going outside before his clients arrived.
I was quite flabbergasted that several minutes before they arrived two cars showed up with four or five people in each car that preceded them, parked at one end of the street, to then have the clients come up.
It was clear to me that paps and media were well aware of where going to and only I [and client] was privy to that information. It was quite an extraordinary event.
11.30am: Shear, solictor to celebrities and footballers, is now talking about an unidentified client who experienced fevered interest in their lives, so much so they sought his advice.
“The increase in interest [about unnamed client] got to the point of fevered
activity and their house had been surrounded by press for several days. Events then occurring that needed to seek advice from me, both as lawyer and common sense advice.”
“They wanted to come and see me, they knew if I went to them, then that would automatically not accelerate, but heighten interest.”
So Shear arranged a meeting in the countryside.
11.26am: Shear says that his clients often said to him they felt the press were monitoring them through electronic surveillance.
From about 4004, 2005 onwards, clients began to believe that coincidences were being replaed by more likely interception of some form or another.
I recall that clients were getting more irritated and suspicious that private information was making its way into the popular media; that stray facts only known to one or two people were published. It caused them to ask question not only of their family and fiends but of me.
11.25am: Shear has worked on extremely high profile cases in the past and acts for several footballers. He has also in the past acted for Jude Law.
His first major case he handled that brought him in close contact with media was Robbie Williams and Take That’s breakup in 1995.
11.23am: Graham Shear is now on the stand.
11.21am: The inquiry has now taken a short break. Graham Shear, solicitor for footballer Ashley Cole is next up.
Solicitor Graham Shear
11.20am: Audio of Joan Smith talking about Glenn Mulcaire and phone hacking
11.18am: Lord Leveson asked Smith whether she thinks she was targeted because of her own profile or that of her former partner, the Labour MP Dennis MacShane.
She says the latter, particularly after the 24-year-old daughter he had with Carol Barnes, the ITN newsreader and his former partner was killed in a sky-diving accident in Australia. It was six weeks after this, while MacShane was still grieving, that the phone hacking started, it is alleged.
[McShane's] daughter’s death made his profile much much higher. Once they became interested in him they became interested in me. So I suppose I was collateral damage.”
No, it never even crossed my mind [to complain to PCC about articles]. Because I’ve seen too many version of press regulation in this country and don’t think that they are adequate bodies to deal with this kind of problem by time complain articles out there anyway and all friends have read it so not going to get much in way of redress.
11.16am: Some more Smith quotes:
“I feel like a different breed to the people who work on the tabloid papers.
“The tabloid attitude is almost infantile to sex.
“They go around like children who have just discovered their parents have sex. The rest of us get on with our lives. The tabloid press is remorseless and pitiless in terms of what it just not to just celebrities and crime vicitms, but ordinary people. ”
11.13am: Smith says it “never crossed her mind” to complained about intrusion into her private life because the Press Complaints Commission was “inadequate”.
11.10am: Joan Smith is now being challenged about her position. It is put to her that she wrote about Liz Hurley and Steve Bing, so why should she complain about intrusion into her own private life?
She replies that she was writing about celebrities who place themselves in the public spotlight too much.
“There is such misogyny in the media, it was a dangerous track she was on,” says Smith who is concerned about the press attitude to “women who are beautiful and base their careers on their appearance”.
11.09am: She says that she was phoned one day in the gym to talk about her relationship with the MP Dennis MacShane.
The point is that neither Dennis nor I have never courted the press and invited them into our lives. Quite the opposite. If I wanted to put private life in public domain I would do it myself and get the facts right. In December when I got call [from a Daily Mail journalist] it was only a few months after I left Denis – I don’t think the journalist cares that you’re in quite a fragile state and still processing things.
11.07am: Joan Smith says the tabloid press seem to live in a 1950s world and anything outside that seems to be a story.
11.03am: Tabloids she says have few morals:
Everything has become a story, we are all caricatures.
To the tabloid press we are just two dimensional, we are just fodder.
Joan Smith, the journalist whose phone was allegedly hacked
11.02am: Asked how she feels about her phone been accessed when her partner had lost his daughter, she says:
“It seems to me that tabloid culture is so remorseless that the people involved have lost any sense that they are human beings”
11.01am: Smith continued:
I’m amazed at how shocked I was…I saw all these notes, Mr Mulcaire had made a note w were going to Spain. I was going to a Pen conference, I was going to Barcelona and Denis was coming out the following weekend and we were arranging to meet up and I was amazed by the details of notes that Mulcaire had.
The police said to me is there any way Mr Mulcaire could have got this information legitimately.
10.55am: Smith has just given a fascinating insight into private investigator Glenn Mulcaire’s snooping.
She says she was told in April this year by officers on Operation Weeting that her phone had been hacked.
She was invited to see the file, she says the first page had her name, address and so on.
As the pages go by Mulcaire made a note of the fact she wrote for the Independent and the Times.
He seems to have been a very obsessive note taker. He also made an note of dates and my name and address May 5, 2004. That’s approximately six weeks after Denis’s daughter had died in a sky diving accident in Australia.
I was particularly shocked that in that period when Denis was bereaved. It’s not an easy time for anyone…that the NOW had been interested enough to ask Mr Mulcaire to listen to our voice mails.
10.54am: Joan Smith has told the inquiry that she is not a public person or a celebrity.
She was the partner of MP Denis MacShane between 2003 and 2010 but says the partnership was far from private.
She says that she and the MP had dined with the prime ministers of Italy and Spain, hardly the behaviour of a secretive couple she said.
10.53am: This was the intro from the NoW story, headlined “The Longest Walk” and published in May 2002:
“Face etched with pain, missing Milly’s mum softly touches a poster of her girl as she and hubby retrace her last footsteps
“The distraught parents of Milly Dowler this week retraced every last step their beloved daughter took before she vanished.
“And, in a heartbreak gesture that summed up all her pain, despair and helpless love, mum Sally gently caressed a photo of her girl on a Surrey police poster she spotted along the way.”
10.50am: Just briefly back to the Dowlers. We’ve now got hold of a picture of that article the paper published in the News of the World back in 2002.
Sally Dowler said she was incredulous when she discovered a private walk she and her husband had taken shortly after Milly had gone missing then appeared in a full photo spread in the sunday tabloid.
10.50am: Joan Smith has been a journalist for more than 30 years. She worked for the Sunday Times Insight team, doing stories like the Iranian embassy siege, the Yorkshire ripper etc.
News of the World. The article the Dowlers complained about.
She then went freelance writing for the Guardian, Independent and the Evening Standard.
She is also an author. She has written a book about women-hating called Misogynies.
She also chairs the English writers Pen committee. Looks after 50 writers and so on in Syria and China and other countries.
10.46am: Joan Smith, writer and broadcaster, is now testifying
10.38am: The Leveson inquiry has now taken a break for five minutes.
10.37am: Bob Dowler: “We’re ordinary people so [we have] no experience in public life situation or controlled media involvement situation.”
Sally: “We wanted the extent of it exposed then inquiry can make the decisions.”
Robert Jay for the inquiry has now finished his questions.
10.36am: Here’s some audio of Sally Dowler describing the moment she realised she was being tailed by the News of the World.
10.35am: Sally now describes the meeting with Rupert Murdoch when he apologised personally for the phone hacking of his newspaper.
“It was a very tense meeting. He was very sincere,” she said.
10.33am: We were really really desperate for information about Milly.
Sally: “The press were able to help us to get the message out and they did.
On the other hand the persistent asking of questions and being doorstepped and everything else associated with and all the letters you get requests for books, films, interviews.
Bob: “I followed the media over thre eyar and recognise that it was very important we were as consistent as we could when dealing with the media and not to give any one party a particular position or angle with a view to not setting another set of issues to deal with.”
10.30am: Sally recalls how she didn’t sleep for three nights as she made sense of the news the police gave her that Milly’s phone had been hacked.
In her mind she made an immediate connection between the private walk (“mile of grief”) and the Birdseye building trip and phone hacking.
Bob: “The walk was nothing to do with Milly’s phone.”
Sally: “That was our homephone or our own mobile phones.”
10.28am: Sally had gone up to the Birdeye building where Milly had been abducted.
She tells of her excitedly of the moment she called into Milly’s voicemails and found some of the messages deleted.
“She’s picked up her voice mails Bob, she’s alive,” said Sally raising her voice excitedly to reconstruct her emotion.
It was then, when we were told about the hacking that is the firt thing I thought.
My Immediate reaction was to phone Gemma.
I told my friends she’s picked up her voicemail, she’s picked up her voicemail.
All I can remember is that they told us she had put some credit on her phone. She was very low or had no credit on her phone.
10.26am: Sally Dowler:
“You had to be on guard outside your front door because someone would come up to you when least expect it. They’d fire a question at you without introducing themselves.”
Bob:
“It’s quite concerning because however polite people are you really are afraid to open front door, because you’re faced with a question and then however you respond to that question might lead to a headline of one line or two.”
10.25am: The News of the World photographer may have been camped out in a car, said Sally.
10.24am: Sally Dowler remembers seeing the News of the World picture and had a “rant” on the phone to her police family liaison officer: “I asked how did they get this picture. In the scheme of things at the time, more important was the fact that Milly was missing. That was more mind consuming.”
10.23am: Sally says in the scheme of things however that the safety of her child was much more important than trying to work out how the News of the World got that photo.
Mile of Grief – the offending News of the World article
.
10.19am: The Dowlers are now talking about reconstructing the walk that their daughter took when she disappeared. The press interest had quietened down and she arranged meeting her husband at the train station at about 4pm. One of the police officers dropped her at the station. She met Bob and quietly retraced her steps.
No-one was around, it was very much like the day she had gone missing. We put out missing leaflets and a telephone number. That number had changed and I was checking to see if the right poster was up and I was touching ghte posters to see if they were they were the right ones.
That Sunday, that photo appeared in the News of the World. I remember seeing it wand I was really cross. They had obviously taking the photo with some sort of telephone lens
It felt like such an intrusion into a really really private grief moment.
10.17am: Bob Dowler is asked if he has a message for News International.
One would sincerely hope that NI and other media organisations would look very carefuly at how they procure and how they maintain information about stories.
Sally:
“As our daughter Gemma said to Rupert Murdoch when we met him: ‘[ use this as an opportunity to put things right in future and have some decent standards and adhere to them’.”
10.16am: Sally Dowler says she found solicitor Mark Lewis on the internet.
It was a real difficult thing to do, because it was during the trial they had found out their phone had been hacked.
Lewis told her: “Youu don’t need to worry Sally, I will represent you come what may.”
10.14am: Bob Dowler:
“I think the gravity of what had happened need to be investigated. It’s part of a much bigger picture but given we learnt about those hacking revelations just before the trial it was extremely important that we understood exactly what went on in terms of practices to uncover this information … It’s a deep concern that our private life became public”
10.11am: Leveson turns to the Dowlers and says: “I can only sympathise to both of you for the appalling losses you have suffered”.
David Sherborne, barrister for the victims is kicking off the inquiry by questioning the Dowlers.
10.10am: The Dowlers are taking the stand. Sally Dowler has just been sworn in, as has Bob Dowler.
10.10am: Jonathan Caplan, lawyer for Associated Newspapers, is asking to be able to respond to any potential criticism of his client or Daily Mail journalists.
“Where criticism has been made – especially of an individual – if criticism is incorrect or false common fairness requires that we or other core participants affected ought to be able to put questions to that witness in order to put the record straight or in the very least give the other side.”
10.08am: My colleague James Robinson has this report:
Court number 73 at the Royal Courts of Justice has filled up quickly.
Amanda Platell, former editor and Mail columnist who was William Hague’s spin doctor, is standing in front of the small press area chatting to ITN correspondent Keir Simmons. Platell has seen the media at its most ferocious from senior vantages points on both sides of the divide between those who write ands those who are written about.
There were very few photographers outside the main entrance to the Royal Courts of Justice, but I’m told there were at least 20 gathered outside the side entrance where the witnesses arrived. I can see Max Mosley observing from the back of the courtroom and the lawyers for the various parties will soon take their seats.
There is a “back to work” Monday morning atmosphere in the room but the mood will soon turn more sombre whenBob and Milly Dowler take the stand.
There is also a sense that today is the day when the inquiry proper really begins. We are about to hear directly from the protagonists in the drama rather than the barristers who are paid to represent them.
10.03am: The Leveson inquiry has opened. QC Robert Jay has confirmed the order – first the Dowlers, then and Joan Smith, Graham Shear and to close the day, Hugh Grant.. Here are brief profiles:
Bob and Sally Dowler
The parents of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler accepted £2m from News International, plus a further £1m personal donation from Rupert Murdoch to charities of their choice, after the Guardian revealed in July that their daughter’s phone had been hacked by the News of the World after she went missing in 2002. The news prompted public revulsion at the activities of the title and led directly to its closure. The Dowlers are likely to give powerful testimony about their treatment by the tabloid, which they claim wrote front-page stories based on information gained by accessing Milly’s mobile as well as their own. Messages left on Milly’s phone were deleted by the paper in order to make way for new ones. David Sherborne QC, who is representing the 51 victims of alleged press intrusion at the Leveson inquiry, told the high court in his opening statement that Sally Dowler felt “euphoric” when she finally got through to her daughter’s voicemail after several unsuccessful attempts because she believed it could mean she was still alive.
Joan Smith
Writer and former partner of Labour MP Dennis McShane. Her phone was allegedly hacked in the wake of the death of McShane’s daughter with another former partner, Carol Barnes, in a skydiving accident in Australia in 2004.
Graham Shear
A lawyer with over 25 years’ experience, Graham Shear has in the past acted for Jude Law, who is separately suing the Sun for alleged interception of voicemails. News International’s QC Rhodri Davies last week told the inquiry the paper was disputing Law’s claims. Other personalities Shear has worked for include Vanessa Feltz, Ashley Cole and other Premier League footballers.
Hugh Grant
The actor, long the subject of tabloid coverage, has become one of the News of the World’s most vociferous critics, working with pressure group Hacked Off to highlight its behaviour and that of the press generally. He is one of dozens of public figures who are suing the paper’s former owner News International for breach of privacy. Earlier this month the mother of his newborn baby, Ting Lan Hong, secured an injunction after allegedly being harrased by the media. It emerged last week that she had allegedly been threatened by an anonymous caller while Grant was appearing on the BBC’s Question Time to discuss phone-hacking. The caller allegedly said she should tell Grant to “shut the fuck up”.
10.01am: My colleague James Robinson, who is court 73 for the Leveson inquiry this morning has just tweeted this
“@jamesro47The sun is the only unclaimed press seat, as far as I can tell.”
9.57am: Adam Cannon, Telegraph’s editorial legal director, has just tweeted.
9.55am: The Leveson inquiry is about to start. We hear Bob and Sally Dowler are up first.
Max Mosley, writer Joan Smith and Hugh Grant already in High Court, says HackedOff campaigner Thais Porthilho-Shrimpton
9.39am: James Robinson and Dan Sabbagh will be tweeting from the inquiry at @jamesro47 and @dansabbagh, while Josh Halliday and I will be keep you posted on the live blog through the day.
9.30am: Four months after Rupert Murdoch apologised, declaring himself “humbled”, the parents of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler will publicly reveal the depth of their anguish about revelations that their daughter’s phone was hacked by the News of the World, lifting their hopes that their daughter may still be alive.
Bob Dowler is expected to be the first of five “victims” of press intrusion to testify at the Leveson inquiry today and the couple’s barrister David Sherborne has already indicated they suspect the News of the World had a surveillance operation that led to cameras snapping their every move in the days following her disappearance.
Also on today is actor Hugh Grant, Ashley Cole’s solicitor Graham Shear and writer Joan Smith.
They are the first batch of 21 “victims” lined up to tell their story over the next week, including Harry Potter author JK Rowling, Kate and Gerry McCann, and Steve Coogan.
We will be covering it live all week.
Please note that comments are switched off for legal reasons.
9.30am: Four months after Rupert Murdoch apologised, declaring himself “humbled”, the parents of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler will publicly reveal the depth of their anguish about revelations that their daughter’s phone was hacked by the News of the World, lifting their hopes that their daughter may still be alive.
Bob Dowler is expected to be the first of five “victims” of press intrusion to testify at the Leveson inquiry today and the couple’s barrister David Sherborne has already indicated they suspect the News of the World had a surveillance operation that led to cameras snapping their every move in the days following her disappearance.
Also on today is actor Hugh Grant, Ashley Cole’s solicitor Graham Shear and writer Joan Smith.
They are the first batch of 21 “victims” lined up to tell their story over the next week, including Harry Potter author JK Rowling, Kate and Gerry McCann, and Steve Coogan.
We will be covering it live all week.
Please note that comments are switched off for legal reasons.
9.30am: Four months after Rupert Murdoch apologised, declaring himself “humbled”, the parents of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler will publicly reveal the depth of their anguish about revelations that their daughter’s phone was hacked by the News of the World, lifting their hopes that their daughter may still be alive.
Bob Dowler is expected to be the first of five “victims” of press intrusion to testify at the Leveson inquiry today and the couple’s barrister David Sherborne has already indicated they suspect the News of the World had a surveillance operation that led to cameras snapping their every move in the days following her disappearance.
Also on today is actor Hugh Grant, Ashley Cole’s solicitor Graham Shear and writer Joan Smith.
They are the first batch of 21 “victims” lined up to tell their story over the next week, including Harry Potter author JK Rowling, Kate and Gerry McCann, and Steve Coogan.
We will be covering it live all week.
Please note that comments are switched off for legal reasons.
9.30am: Four months after Rupert Murdoch apologised, declaring himself “humbled”, the parents of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler will publicly reveal the depth of their anguish about revelations that their daughter’s phone was hacked by the News of the World, lifting their hopes that their daughter may still be alive.
Bob Dowler is expected to be the first of five “victims” of press intrusion to testify at the Leveson inquiry today and the couple’s barrister David Sherborne has already indicated they suspect the News of the World had a surveillance operation that led to cameras snapping their every move in the days following her disappearance.
Also on today is actor Hugh Grant, Ashley Cole’s solicitor Graham Shear and writer Joan Smith.
They are the first batch of 21 “victims” lined up to tell their story over the next week, including Harry Potter author JK Rowling, Kate and Gerry McCann, and Steve Coogan.
We will be covering it live all week.
Related articles
- Dowlers and Hugh Grant give evidence – live (guardian.co.uk)
- The Leveson inquiry is a high-court conflict between celebrities and tabloids (guardian.co.uk)
- Leveson Inquiry: Dowlers and Hugh Grant to appear – BBC News (bbc.co.uk)
- Leveson inquiry into phone hacking: first witnesses – profiles (guardian.co.uk)
- Leveson Inquiry Into Phone Hacking, Media Begins (huffingtonpost.com)
- Leveson inquiry: Hugh Grant and Dowlers to give evidence on Monday (guardian.co.uk)
- Hugh Grant among Leveson witnesses (independent.co.uk)
- Leveson Inquiry: Milly Dowler’s family and Hugh Grant to give evidence (telegraph.co.uk)
- Slain British girl’s family to give phone hacking evidence (cnn.com)
