Piers Morgan - Phone Hacking Allegations

Phone Hacking Allegations

In July 2011 the political blogger Paul Staines alleged that Morgan published a story while knowing it to have been obtained by phone hacking while editor of the Daily Mirror in 2002. Morgan is also alleged to have close ties with the Rupert Murdoch family and defended them in the media against suggestions that they were more involved in the News International phone hacking scandal than they claimed. Morgan described in a 2006 article he wrote for the Daily Mail how he had heard tapes of messages that Paul McCartney had left for his wife, Heather Mills, on her mobile phone. Morgan wrote that "Stories soon emerged that the marriage was in trouble - at one stage I was played a tape of a message Paul had left for Heather on her mobile phone. It was heartbreaking. The couple had clearly had a tiff, Heather had fled to India, and Paul was pleading with her to come back. He sounded lonely, miserable and desperate, and even sang "We Can Work It Out" into the answerphone." He came under criticism for his "boasting" about phone hacking from Conservative MP Louise Mensch, who has since apologised for these accusations.

During Morgan's tenure as editor, the Daily Mirror was advised by Steven Nott that voicemail interception was possible by means of a standard PIN code. Despite staff initially expressing enthusiasm for the story it did not appear in the paper, although it did subsequently feature in a South Wales Argus article and on BBC Radio 5 Live in October 1999. On 18 July 2011 Nott was visited by officers of Operation Weeting. The Daily Mirror's publishers Trinity Mirror declined to comment when approached by The Independent for its article of 6 August 2011.

On 20 December Morgan was a witness by satellite link from the United States at the Leveson Inquiry. While he did "not believe to the best of my recollection" that phone hacking had occurred at the Mirror, he admitted to listening to the voice mail left by Paul McCartney for Heather Mills, but refused to "discuss where he was played that tape or who played it — it would compromise a source." Appearing as a witness at the same Inquiry on 9 February 2012, Mills was asked under oath if she had ever made a recording of Paul McCartney's phonecalls or answerphone messages and had ever played it to Piers Morgan or "anybody else", she replied: "Never". Mills told the inquiry that Morgan was "a man that has written nothing but awful things about me for years and would have relished telling the inquiry if she had played a personal voicemail message to him".

On 23 May 2012, the Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman was a witness at the Leveson Inquiry. He recalled a lunch with the Mirror editor in September 2002 at which Morgan outlined the means of hacking into a mobile phone.