On 15 February, the family of Caroline Flack sat together on a bench memorial in their local woods, raised a glass, and held her in their hearts and thoughts. Four years ago, the television star - one of the most recognisable faces and admired personalities in British entertainment - took her own life at the age of 40.

“We just go to her bench in the woodlands,” her mum Christine explains quietly to Byline Times. “We meet there each year - Lizzie, my eldest daughter, and Jody, Carrie’s twin, and Paul, her brother, come. “This year we took a bottle of wine to toast her, and had McDonald’s because that’s what Carrie would have had. And we usually end up smiling, really. She did some funny things. She was always so funny.”

For those who knew ‘Carrie’ best, it’s been four years of heartbreak, grief, and an open-ended search for understanding and acceptance. It’s also been a quest for answers from a police and justice system the Flacks feel failed her.

They are a close-knit bunch. Chris lives with her partner Nigel and Caroline’s strapping grey Scottish fold cat Waffle in a neat white-washed apartment in a Georgian conversion in Norwich. Jody and her family are based nearby. Chris adores her grandchildren. They’re in and out of each other’s lives daily. Her home is decorated with reminders of happier moments - framed magazine covers and photos celebrating Caroline’s many remarkable achievements; winning Strictly Come Dancing; collecting a Bafta for Love Island; being Cosmo’s Celebrity Influencer of the Year 2018. 

It was here, amid such great memories, that Chris took a call on 15 February, 2020, that changed everything. It was Jody. She had just found her sister.

 Caroline Flack at Winter Wonderland 2019 Launch at Hyde Park. Photo: Landmark Media

No Way Back

Caroline Flack’s emotional struggles were long-known to her inner circle as well as many in the tabloid media and at her employer ITV. For five years she had presented the channel’s top-rating show Love Island; her bubbly kindness and relatable girl-next-door glamour a hit with millions of viewers.

But behind the confident public persona Caroline’s mental health fluctuated. She was deeply sensitive to online negativity, and obsessed over disparaging remarks on social media - “There could be 30 nice things said, one bad thing said, and that was it,” Christine says – to the point of depression.

So when, two months earlier, a domestic incident with her then-boyfriend – Lewis Burton, a tennis coach and model –  snowballed into a career-threatening court drama, it was a cause for deep concern.

Caroline’s greatest fear was always that her mental health challenges – for her a source of unspeakable shame and anxiety – would become public knowledge. To lose control of this deeply personal information, in the glare of a tabloid media with which she had long-endured an often abusive relationship, was devastating.

The facts of Caroline’s criminal case were established by Mary Hassell, the Coroner investigating her death, in August 2020. In the early hours of 12 December 2019, following nights out separately in which both had been drinking, Caroline and Lewis Burton returned together in cabs to her flat in Stoke Newington, east London.

The couple had gone to bed and Burton was asleep when his phone lit up with a message from a woman. Caroline picked up the device, holding her own phone in her other hand. She wanted to confront her boyfriend about it. Some “choice words” were used, says Chris.

At the inquest, the coroner re-enacted the movement of Caroline sweeping her hand toward Burton as he sat up quickly in bed. He hit his head on the corner of the handset she was holding, causing a 1cm cut beyond his hairline.

“That’s how it hit his head,” Chris says. “It was an accident.”

It was around 5 am. The pair argued and in the heat of it, Burton called the police. He said initially he thought he had been hit with a lamp or fan, though officers at the scene quickly established this to be inaccurate and removed no evidence from the scene beyond the phone.

Caroline later told the police that as he rang them Burton — still under the influence of alcohol — told her: “You’re fucked”. He was right. Caroline’s reaction to the dawning realisation of police involvement was extreme. In a display of emotional fragility, she self-harmed.

“I don't think he realised what would happen with the media if the police came,” Chris says. “And so many police cars turned up… and that's when she started cutting her wrists.”

The Police Arrive

When officers arrived eight minutes after Burton’s call, they met a scene that required nuance to understand. Caroline admitted her role immediately — she signed a note recording the fact — and explained that the injury to Burton was caused unintentionally.

“When the police got there, they saw this [blood] and that's when she said ‘no I did it’, because they thought he may have hurt her. So straightaway she admitted it,” says Chris.

Although Crown Prosecution Service lawyer Katy Weiss later described it as like a “scene from a horror movie”, it’s beyond question that the police knew from the beginning the blood was substantially Caroline’s.

Not that this self-evident fact translated into the initial CPS case. Misinformation and incorrect assertions tumbled out at Highbury Corner Magistrates’ Court on 23 December 2019, as the news and social media looked on rubbing their hands.

Caroline entered a simple not guilty plea and through her solicitor sought a lifting of bail restrictions so she could see Burton over Christmas — he did not support the prosecution, branding it a “show trial”,  as they remained in a relationship — and plead her case in court at a later date.

Weiss objected forcefully — and successfully — on the matter of bail and gave plenty for the papers to report by repeating the lamp claim to the court. While acknowledging that Caroline had told police she was suicidal, Weiss also attacked her as “manipulative”, insisting: “She has ruined her own life by committing the assault.”

Such inflammatory words fuelled a frenzy of often prejudicial tabloid reporting. In the weeks between her arrest and death — a period in which criminal proceedings were formally “active” for the purposes of a media required by law to protect the presumption of innocence and right to a fair trial — the reporting on the case often went far beyond neutral. 

The Media Step In 

The biggest blow fell on New Year’s Eve 2019. A few days earlier she had surprised her family with a Christmas Day visit — “for 24 hours we just forgot it all. We were happy. Things felt normal again. But on Boxing Day, she was gone,” Chris recalls — when a picture Lewis Burton took of the bed on which Caroline had bled found its way onto The Sun’s front page.

Byline Times has learnt The Sun paid an unknown party a sum believed to be north of £20,000 for the picture, which had been shared over WhatsApp and sold, and published with the headline: “BEDROOM BLOODBATH Shocking pic shows Caroline Flack’s blood-soaked bed after her ‘lamp attack on boyfriend Lewis Burton’.”

Critically, this newspaper has established from multiple sources, the story was never put to Caroline’s people for verification of its accuracy per regular journalistic practices. Chris has her own thoughts about why.

Love Island TV presenter Caroline Flack, centre, escorted by police, as she arrives at Highbury Magistrates' Court in London in December 2019. Photo: PA Images

She says: “It was a dreadful front page, really misleading. I don't know why they didn’t try and get the correct facts. I think had they done so they would never have been able to print it. There is no way that picture should have been published.

“I still see things online now calling her a domestic abuser. It’s all been driven by that [front page] because it read as if the blood was her boyfriend's. And they've never made it clear. They've taken the photo down from online, I believe, but it's still out there.”

Chris adds: “He took the picture to send to friends and say ‘Look what she’s done’. Then one of those friends phoned the Sun and got quite a lot of money for it. I was told £20,000 but I think it was more. I can’t think about it because it makes me so angry that anyone would do that and then just go on and live their life.”

Yet The Sun wasn’t finished.  On 14 February 2020 - the same day Caroline found out her case was certain to go to trial – came a further teasing headline. “NO FLACKS GIVEN Brutal Caroline Flack Valentine’s Day card mocks troubled star with ‘I’ll f***ing lamp you’ message”, the Murdoch paper said. Within 24 hours she was gone.

The Coroner Concludes… 

The following August, as the country enjoyed an uneasy, temporary, release from Covid lockdown, coroner Mary Hassell – armed with all the facts and the wisdom of hindsight - could not have been clearer with her assessment.

Recording that Caroline had intended to take her own life, Hassell said: “I find the reason for her taking her life was she now knew she was being prosecuted for certainty and she knew she would face the media, press, publicity - it would all come down upon her.”

The lack of support Caroline’s family felt she received from ITV was a further hammer blow. A few days after the incident she - officially - ‘stepped down’ from hosting Love Island, but the truth was not quite so clear cut.

Chris says: “Immediately, before she was found guilty or anything, they cancelled her from Love Island. They say they didn't, but they did. They sacked her. And then Channel 4 also cancelled a programme that she had already recorded. That was her world, just slipping away.”

Caroline succumbed to a perfect personal storm. And as her family tried to pick up the pieces of their lives amid a flurry of bills incoming from lawyers and others with sudden accounts to settle, Chris was left with far more questions than answers.

“She was trying to do everything she could to go along with what the police wanted and what her lawyers were telling her,” she says. “Carrie would say ‘no mum, you have to leave it, you can’t say anything’. That was the advice given to her - that it would all be fine and was just an argument between boyfriend and girlfriend.

“And then, of course, no one dropped it. The night before she died two things happened. She found out someone had sold the picture to The Sun, and the CPS said ‘No, we're taking you to court’. It all got too much for her.”

As the nation reeled in shock at the sudden loss of one of its brightest young stars, the tabloids reaped a backlash. More than 800,000 people signed a petition calling for a ‘Caroline’s Law’ to make it an offence for papers to hound an individual to the point of suicide.

“It was after that I then started asking questions which I really wish I had asked at the time when she was alive,” Chris says. She began by launching a formal complaint against the Metropolitan Police, prompting the force to investigate the highly unusual sequence of events that led to the bringing of charges against Caroline at all…

It’s now just 12 weeks until millions of people will go to the ballot box in England. And who knows how little time we have until the General Election? 

In May, those in England will be electing thousands of councillors plus mayors in London, the East Midlands, Greater Manchester, the Liverpool City Region, the North East, South Yorkshire, Tees Valley, West Midlands, West Yorkshire, and York & North Yorkshire. And across England and Wales, new Police and Crime Commissioners (remember them?) are being picked.

These mayoral and PCC elections will be happening under a new voting system - well, a Victorian one imposed on them following the Elections Act 2022. 

But these aren’t the only democratic challenges this year.

Unprecedented Risks

The upcoming General Election will require mandatory Voter ID for the first time ever, sparking concerns about its impact on voter turnout and access. Recent polling by WeThink for this paper showed that up to ten million voters are unaware of the new requirements. It’s a potential disaster in the making. 

Ministers have also awarded themselves a huge hike in the election spending limit, with an 80% rise in the cap for political parties. Needless to say, only Sunak’s party knows when the election will be, giving them a major advantage.

The Government has handed a new strategy to the Electoral Commission - for the first time steering what was previously an independent elections watchdog.  

Meanwhile, around eight million people are completely missing from the electoral roll in Britain, with little indication that this gap is being closed. Indeed, many of those missing millions will have to both register to vote, and to order photo ID. 

As usual super-safe seats will be ignored by parties and the media- while a handful of swing seats will lap up parties’ largesse and compete for votes. 

"Dark money" and a lack of funding transparency in political campaigns will leave open questions about the sources of campaign cash - and the influence of opaque groups and think tanks on our elections. 

Take just one example: unlike businesses and charities, political parties are not subject to anti-money laundering regulations - the rules to prevent illicit cash flowing into the system. It’s a situation that Electoral Commission chair John Pullinger has described as untenable. And yet it persists. 

Nor is there any cap on the amount one person or company can donate to a political cause or party: one British citizen living in Russia for the past 50 years could, in theory, bankroll a party’s entire election campaign, with that party indebted to the tune of £5m, £15m, £30m or more. 

This year, we may see the emergence of new 'astroturf' groups - PR-firm initiated campaigns that have little genuine popular support, but can shape political discourse, fueled by money from industry groups and wealthy donors. 

These battles will be both on and offline. Millions will be spent on ‘microtargeting’ voters online, with the opportunity for highly personalised and potentially manipulative campaign strategies.

But at the same time, parties will use dirty tricks locally - issuing election leaflets that masquerade as local newspapers, blurring the lines between genuine news and campaign propaganda.  

Misinformation and disinformation, from activists here but also potentially from hostile states, pose a significant risk to the integrity of elections by leading voters to question who they can really trust. 

That problem is sent into overdrive by the advent of deepfakes and generative AI - with this year marking the first genuine 'artificial intelligence elections' in the UK. 

Oh, and the expansion of the overseas franchise in 2024 has led to an addition of two million extra potential overseas voters. They’ll be able to vote wherever they last lived in the UK, sometimes many decades ago. 

A Plan of Action

As a result of all this, UK elections face major challenges to their integrity this year. 

And we need hard-hitting media - fearless investigative journalism - to follow the cash and the ads, and to call out dodgy campaigning when it rears its head. That’s where you come in. 

Alongside the local heroes at the Bylines Network, our sister organisation, we want to launch an ambitious project to track these issues and put democracy front and centre this year. 

VoteWatch 2024 will have three core focuses: 

We’re relying on our supporters to make the project a reality. Because we know that if we don’t make this effort, no one else will. 

So this is an ask: please help us cover the staff, infrastructure and investigative resources we need to make it possible. We need to raise £20,000 to get this off the ground - and when we raise it, the work starts with gusto. We’ve got exciting plans but it will take all our efforts to get it off the ground. 

DONATE / HELP US MONITOR 2024 ELECTIONS

VoteWatch Volunteers

There’s more to do - and this one doesn’t cost a penny. We want to work with readers across the country to get a continuous stream of perspectives, insights and news of what’s happening on the ground.

What does the election campaign look like where you are? Why have candidates and parties been saying? What leaflets are you getting - and who’s targeting you on social media?

We’re looking for as many volunteers as possible - citizen sentinels - to watch the ground campaign and feed into our national reporting. We’ll put the spotlight on dirty tricks, wherever it's happening, while building a picture of emerging campaign trends. 

It’s a biggy, but we think if anyone can do it, it’s us and the hundreds of citizen journalists at the Bylines Network and its 10 regional sites. 

So, can you sign up to be a VoteWatch Volunteer?

Thanks for your support. It’s going to be a dirty year in politics, but we can help clean it up. 

Fill in our short form to become a VoteWatch Volunteer here and we'll be in touch soon.

Do you have a story that needs highlighting? Get in touch by emailing josiah@bylinetimes.com

The Labour Party, which had recently shown signs it might abandon altogether the pursuit of reform of the media, has this week renewed its support for Leveson-style press regulation, albeit in low-key fashion.

In a House of Commons debate on the Government’s plan to scrap the last element of the Leveson reform scheme left on the statute books, Labour members voted for an amendment aimed at preventing complete repeal.

Shadow Culture Secretary Thangam Debonnaire, setting out her party’s position, told MPs: "We on the Labour benches want a press that is regulated in a way that makes it accountable for its reporting and that meets the highest ethical and journalistic standards." 

Labour members then voted in favour of an amendment tabled by rebel Conservative MP George Eustice which aims to keep alive the Leveson scheme to encourage news publishers to participate in effective regulation that is both independent of the industry and free from political interference. 

In terms of parliamentary procedure, it was the least that Labour could do in relation to reforms it had backed strongly, under successive leaders, ever since the Leveson Inquiry into the culture, ethics and practices of the press, which followed the exposure of the phone-hacking scandal, produced its recommendations in 2012.  

At issue was section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act, which provides incentives – ‘sticks and carrots’ – for the press to join a Leveson-standard regulator. Though the Conservatives voted for it in 2013, successive Conservative governments have refused to implement it and, in a sop to its press friends, Rishi Sunak's Government is now trying to repeal it altogether.

Whether it can be repealed before a general election is uncertain after this week’s Commons vote – the Lords must now have their say – but for those in favour of better press regulation and of press reform generally, it is the position adopted by Labour, as the prospective next government, that is most important. 

Had Labour abstained on the Eustice amendment, as it had shown signs it was preparing to do, it would have meant the abandonment by the party of even the most cautious aspiration to challenge press power – a cause that has strong support on the party’s backbenches. 

The Liberal Democrats and Scottish National Party also supported the amendment. 

Explaining Labour’s position on the Eustice amendment, Debonnaire told the Commons: "The majority of British journalists are decent and honourable, but there are some who even now continue to drag the good name of that profession into disrepute. That profession is a cornerstone of our democracy and it is important that the public are able to trust it, but at the moment we are at risk of the public losing faith in the profession of journalism, as was certainly also the case before section 40 was created and before that scandal was exposed."

Read the debate here, starting at column 749.

Brian Cathcart is a journalist, academic and campaigner. He was one of the founders of the Hacked Off group for a free and accountable press and which campaigned against the repeal of section 40

Scotland Yard is facing growing calls to re-investigate Piers Morgan and a “generation” of former Mirror Group Newspapers editors for systemic newsroom criminality and years of cover-up, Byline Times can reveal.

As claimants saw a bid to overturn a time-bar on hundreds of potential civil suits against the publisher adjourned yesterday, victims, lawyers and a former detective joined Prince Harry’s demand for the police and Crown Prosecution Service to do “its duty”.

It follows a significant High Court victory for the Duke of Sussex last month in which Mr Justice Fancourt found industrial scale unlawful information gathering (UIG) went on at MGN’s three national newspapers between 1996 and 2011.

Among extensive findings of wrongdoing, the judge said MGN executives not only knew about the illegal activity and “could and should” have stopped it, but instead of doing so “turned a blind eye to what was going on, and positively concealed it”.

Now media lawyer Jonathan Coad; actress Denise Welch; and former Crimewatch presenter, journalist and police officer Jacqui Hames are calling on Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley to re-open Operation Golding, the phone-hacking investigation that saw Morgan interviewed in February 2014.

Despite uncovering significant evidence and putting substantial public resources into Golding, former director of Public Prosecutions Alison Saunders decided in 2015 that there was “insufficient” prospect of winning a conviction “in any” of 10 potential cases against MGN employees.

However, Jonathan Coad believes the ruling in the case of Duke of Sussex and Others vs MGN Ltd offers a compelling case for investigation of the Mirror Group over findings that lawyers and some board members hid endemic criminality, misled shareholders, the stock market, a public inquiry, and the High Court itself.

“Prince Harry’s seismic win over Mirror Group Newspapers has summoned the chickens home to roost," he told Byline Times. "Despite the publisher’s expenditure of millions in legal fees to cover it up, the judge found such a plethora of law-breaking at Piers Morgan's Mirror that for any public confidence to survive in the criminal justice system as applies to the behemoths of Fleet Street, there must now be a full investigation by the Metropolitan Police.”

The denials of knowledge of newsroom crimes – offered under oath by a succession of former Mirror bosses to the 2011-12 Leveson Inquiry into press misconduct – ought also to be probed, according to Mr Coad.

The 2005 Inquiries Act makes it a specific offence to knowingly give wrong or distorted evidence to a public inquiry. And Prince Harry’s lawyers were able to prove that MGN continued to hack phones for stories – the industry practice that sparked the inquiry – even after Lord Justice Leveson was conducting the televised questioning of witnesses.

“Justice Fancourt’s findings exposed an entire generation of editors, lawyers, and some board members conspiring together in a form of organised crime which goes far beyond the mere tabloid espionage at the heart of Harry's case," Mr Coad added.

“Now arise issues such as the impact on the Mirror shareholders, the lies the company told the public and authorities, as well as lies individuals appear to have told the Leveson inquiry under oath.”

Following the 386-page ruling on 15 December, Scotland Yard said it was “carefully considering” its content before taking decisions on further action.

Outside court, Prince Harry's lawyers read a statement in which he urged UK authorities “to do their duty for the British public and investigate bringing charges against the company and those who have broken the law”.

Scotland Yard told Byline Times this week that its position has not changed and that the judgment remains under review.

Jacqui Hames is calling on her former employers to heed lessons of 2006 when it failed to properly investigate Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World, following the hacking of Royal Household phones by private investigator Glenn Mulcaire and former royal editor Clive Goodman.

“It’s clear that opportunities to properly investigate crimes at the News of the World in 2006 were lost, creating a perception that the newspaper group used its influence on the Met to cover up the sheer scale of offending," she said.

“In 2015, the Met wrote off large amounts of public money by aborting Operation Golding after pressure from the press, calling it a witch-hunt, portraying themselves as victims. Perhaps if it had continued, the successful legal action brought by Prince Harry and others in 2023 using the wealth evidence the Met had gathered, would have been unnecessary.

“On reflection, it’s very hard not to join the dots between the newspaper industry and political influence in the Met’s decisions. The public interest must not once again be sacrificed by self-interest. We cannot let this pass unchallenged.”

The voicemails of Denise Welch were hacked and her hotel room illegally bugged by MGN in 2002 and 2003 at the order of Sunday Mirror editors Tina Weaver and Mark Thomas (both Morgan proteges) who have never faced criminal charges despite clear admissions of wrongdoing – and the payment of damages to victims – on their behalf by their former employers.

Welch likened the lack of official action to the Post Office Horizon scandal or the enabling of Jimmy Savile. She said: “So many lives were devastated by the top decision-makers at Mirror Group, yet none has faced justice despite masses of evidence coming out in Prince Harry’s case and hundreds of others.

“It went far beyond phone-hacking, which is all Piers Morgan denies. My hotel rooms were bugged by people working directly for Mirror editors. I was then entrapped into talking about things that were my private business, which was incredibly cruel. Like many, I lived for years without trusting a soul. The impact was huge for my family and I. I believed for a long time that an actor friend had sold a story on me. Friendships were wrecked.

“At that time, my young son was seriously ill in Alder Hey hospital and needed life-saving surgery. The thought that people were listening in to my life during this distressing time and continued to do so for years sickens me.

“But the people at the top of these papers, who benefited most, have been allowed to escape when they should face justice. I do not know why they are able to get away with it. We’ve seen what happens with Jimmy Savile or the Post Office scandal when a blind eye is turned to wrongdoing. The police should certainly be investigating.”

The calls for action come as MGN’s former top lawyer, Marcus Partington, faces a separate investigation by the Solicitors’ Regulation Authority over his involvement in cover-ups at the company. The SRA announcement comes four years after this newspaper's sister site Byline Investigates first asked the regulator whether it was looking into his professional conduct.

They also come as speculation mounts over Gary Jones, the Editor of the Daily and Sunday Express, newspapers with the same owners as MGN – Reach plc. Sources at Reach have told Byline Times to expect a decision on his future with the firm “in due course”. When asked, the company declined to comment.

In December, Justice Fancourt found that Jones was one among a string of Morgan-connected editors and senior staff heavily involved in the commission of illegal spying on which MGN’s three national newspapers – the Daily Mirror, The Sunday Mirror and The Sunday People – spent millions of pounds between 1995 and 2011.

Jones was singled out in particular. He obtained private bank account details for, among others, Prince and Princess Michael of Kent, former New Labour Downing Street director of communications Alastair Campbell, former New Labour Minister Peter Mandelson, and members of the Bank of England Credit Committee.

The judge ruled that other key MGN figures, some of whom now hold senior roles at other organisations, were aware or likely aware of illegal activity – including Richard Wallace, now Piers Morgan’s boss at Murdoch-owned TalkTV and Neil Wallis, former editor of The People who in 2015 was acquitted of phone-hacking charges relating to his time as Deputy Editor at the News of the World.

Others include Morgan’s Mirror Deputy Editor Tina Weaver (for whom he advocated in 2001 to become Sunday Mirror editor), Morgan’s former Features Editor Mark Thomas, and Sunday Mirror and The People Senior Editors Nick Buckley and James Scott – the journalist who handed Morgan one of his biggest Mirror scoops hacked straight from the voicemails of former England football manager Sven Goran Eriksson and television presenter Ulrika Jonsson.

Justice Fancourt said that, while most of the directors of Trinity Mirror plc – the former name for MGN – did not know about illegal activity, two did. Paul Vickers, the group legal director, “certainly knew about phone hacking from about the end of 2003”; while the ex-Mirror chief executive Sly Bailey knew of hacking.

The board executives “knew about the illegal activity that was going at their newspapers and could and should have put a stop to it", the judge said. Instead, "they turned a blind eye to what was going on, and positively concealed it".

MGN abandoned a long-held policy of paying off claimants before they got to court in order to allow Prince Harry’s trial to proceed last May and June. The company – having vacated several trial dates – was keen to test the law of ‘limitation’ in the hope of time-barring potentially hundreds, if not more than a thousand, future claims from proceeding under a six-year time-out rule.

Despite the damage it suffered in the trial – it emerged yesterday that MGN is facing a costs bill from the ‘other side’ of £2 million – the company still considered it a victory, because it was able to include two of the weakest claims on the issue of limitation (among the many in the wings) around which to argue its point, and in the cases of Fiona Wightman, former wife of comedian Paul Whitehouse, and the actress Nikki Sanderson it won, even though the judge found they had indeed been victims of illegal behaviour.

But yesterday that victory was called into doubt as a bid was launched to appeal against the judge’s view that the pair ought to have known sooner they had cases to bring, despite the concealment of a lot of criminality by MGN.

Justice Fancourt was presented with four grounds under which his judgment is said to have misapplied the law – among them a ruling they should as individuals have acted as “hyper-vigilant” “detectives” in pursuing their claims. 

His decision on whether to grant an appeal will be heard at a date to be set. However, even if he denies it, the matter is likely to be taken out of his hands and referred to the Court of Appeal for review.

Meanwhile, Rupert Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers (NGN) also ought to face investigation into its illegal scrutiny of political opponents to a bid to buy Sky TV in 2010-11, according to former Liberal Democrat Minister Chris Huhne.

In December, Huhne won his case for phone-hacking against NGN. Last week, in an interview with former Guardian investigative journalist Nick Davies at London's Frontline Club, Huhne said he hoped Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley would look into prosecuting senior executives at the company.

Huhne said in December that he believed the settlement "vindicates my long-standing claim that News Corporation directors and managers targeted me to get rid of a political opponent".

"My case is unprecedented because the unlawful information-gathering was directed not by journalists but by News Corp executives," he added. "They had two objectives: corporate espionage to help Murdoch's bid for Sky, and bull-dozing pesky politicians out of the way."

In a statement following the settlement, a spokesman said it "strongly denied that there was any corporate motive or direction to obtain information unlawfully", and that the stories published "were legitimate and in the public interest".

Dan Evans is a phone-hacking whistleblower and was a witness for the claimants in Sussex and Ors vs MGN Ltd and Gulati and Ors vs MGN Ltd. Tom Latchem was a trainee reporter with MGN and worked for the company between 2006 and 2009

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