Police officer 'sold royal family contact details'

Police officer 'sold royal family contact details'
Robert Peston

Phone-hacking scandal


I have learned that News of the World e-mails uncovered by News International in 2007 contained evidence that the Sunday newspaper was paying a Royal Protection Officer for the contact details of senior members of the royal family, their friends and their relations.

According to a source, the e-mails include requests by a reporter for sums of about £1,000 to pay police officers in the royal protection branch for the information. The phone details could have been used to hack phones of the royal family.

"There was clear evidence from the e-mails that the security of the royal family was being put at risk," the source said. "I was profoundly shocked when I saw them."

The source added that the e-mails were unambiguous signs of criminal activity at the News of the World.

"It is quite astonishing that these emails were not handed to the police for investigation when they were first found in 2007", he said.

The e-mails were not passed to the Metropolitan police until 20 June this year, when they were re-obtained - from the offices of the solicitors Harbottle and Lewis - by a recently appointed new team of News International executives.

James Murdoch, News International's chairman, has said he was not in the picture about the full extent of wrongdoing at the News of the World until recently.

You can read more about these e-mails in my blog of yesterday. And I will publish some additional details in a bit.

Update, 13:55: I can now disclose more detail about the extraordinary e-mails that appear to show royal protection officers were selling confidential information to the News of the World.

In one of the dynamite e-mails, Clive Goodman - the paper's disgraced former royal editor - was requesting cash from the newspaper's editor, Andy Coulson, to buy a confidential directory of the Royal Family's landline telephone numbers, and all the phone numbers - including mobiles - of the household staff.

The relevant e-mail implies that a police officer in royal protection had stolen the directory, which is known as the Green Book, and wanted £1000 for it.

The Green Book contains, for example, the home numbers of Princess Anne, Prince Edward and so on. It provides more complete contact details of officials working for all the Royal Family.

The directory is stamped "secure" on the cover. When members of the royal household receive a copy they have to sign for it. And it is supposed to be locked away when not in use.

The implication of the e-mails is that the News of the World had bought the Green Book on at least one previous occasion.

The e-mails also suggest that the News of the World had police contacts in a number of royal palaces, and had bought information from several of them.

Badboy wrote:IT IS SPECULATED THAT PRINCE CHARLES AND CAMILLA PHONES HAVE BEEN HACKED.

Badboy wrote:THEY ARE SAYING THE QUEEN AND GORDON BROWN PHONES WERE HACKED BY THE SUN AND SUNDAY TIMES,THE SUN? PAID TO LOOK AT GORDON BROWN SON MEDICAL RECORDS.

widowan wrote:

Badboy wrote:THEY ARE SAYING THE QUEEN AND GORDON BROWN PHONES WERE HACKED BY THE SUN AND SUNDAY TIMES,THE SUN? PAID TO LOOK AT GORDON BROWN SON MEDICAL RECORDS.

Dreadful.

The child who died? Is there no end to how ghoulish they will get? My God. He'll be lucky to have a newspaper empire left when this is all done.

Did they learn nothing from Diana's death? You can't pay people to do wrong things, to invade privacy and imperil people so your readers can have access to sh*t that is NONE OF THEIR BUSINESS.

kitti wrote:It was BOTH his children ....his daughter had a brain disorder and wasn't going to last the night and somehow the papers got hold off it and his son, who has Cystic Fibrosis and only the family knew was also printed in the papers.


All these details were only known by family and hospital staff.

Confidential health records for Brown's family have reached the media on two different occasions. In October 2006, the then editor of the Sun, Rebekah Brooks, contacted the Browns to tell them that they had obtained details from the medical file of their four-month-old son, Fraser, which revealed that the boy was suffering from cystic fibrosis. This appears to have been a clear breach of the Data Protection Act, which would allow such a disclosure only if it was in the public interest. Friends of the Browns say the call caused them immense distress, since they were only coming to terms with the diagnosis, which had not been confirmed. The Sun published the story.