Andy Coulson tells phone-hacking trial he heard David Blunkett voicemails

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/apr/16/andy-coulson-phone-hacking-david-blunkett-voicemails

Version 0 of 1.

Andy Coulson admitted at the Old Bailey that he listened to intimate voicemails left by the former home secretary David Blunkett to his lover.

The former editor of the News of the World told the phone-hacking trial that he did not know the hacked messages had been obtained illegally and that when confronted with them in 2004 he was "shocked" and "angry" that one of his staff had collected them in that way.

In a dramatic session of evidence, Coulson said that the tabloid's former chief reporter, Neville Thurlbeck, played the voicemails to him in his office as part of an attempt to persuade him that Blunkett was having an affair with a married woman, Kimberley Fortier.

Thurlbeck had initially told Coulson about the voicemails a week or so earlier in a late night telephone call while Coulson was on holiday in Italy. Coulson told jurors he could not believe what he was hearing and ordered the journalist to end his investigation into the affair immediately. "Neville told me that he had a tip that David Blunkett was having an affair with Kimberly Fortier," said Coulson, referring to the then publisher of the Spectator magazine. "He said he believed the story was true because he had heard some voicemails.".

The former editor, who subsequently went on to work for David Cameron, said that Thurlbeck had told him "he had heard some voicemails and I was shocked that he was telling me this and because it was in relation to David Blunkett, the home secretary". He said he had replied to Thurlbeck by using "some colourful language to the effect of 'what on earth do you think you are doing?'."

Coulson, who was editing Rupert Murdoch's now defunct Sunday tabloid at the time, is on trial for conspiring to hack into voicemail messages. He denies the charge.

He was giving evidence for the third day in the long-running trial and a day after he told the jury that he did not know hacking was a crime in 2002, when messages left for missing schoolgirl Milly Dowler were intercepted by Glenn Mulcaire on behalf of the paper.

Speaking before a hushed and packed Old Bailey on Wednesday, Coulson said he told Thurlbeck to stop what he was doing immediately but his chief reporter had attempted to justify it as a story because they made politically uncomfortable bedfellows – Blunkett was a senior Labour cabinet minister and Fortier was publisher of a "Tory magazine".

"I was very clear that I wanted any investigation that was taking place to stop," said Coulson.

At that point his concern was about a breach of privacy, he said, and especially a breach of the privacy of Blunkett because the senior minister was "broadly supportive" of the paper. But when Coulson returned from holiday Thurlbeck came to his office to pitch the story again, this time with the support of the voicemails. Coulson said: "Neville came to my office. He said he wanted to argue for the story again. He believed it was in the public interest and he wanted to play the voicemails to demonstrate that."

Coulson then told the jury for the first time that he had listened to some voicemails. Asked by his defence counsel, Timothy Langdale QC, if Thurlbeck did in fact play any messages to him, Coulson replied: "Yes, he did."

He continued: "I remember a message in which David Blunkett was effectively declaring his love but that he was also saying that he was thinking of making the relationship public. I remember a phrase 'going to blow this apart' – something along those lines."

Coulson said one of the voicemails also referred to terrorism and a trip that Blunkett was making to or from GCHQ.

Jurors have previously heard that more than 330 recordings and transcripts of messages taken from the phone of Kimberly Fortier – now Kimberley Quinn – were discovered by police investigating phone hacking.

Thurlbeck went on to tell him that there was also an issue with the possible paternity of one of Fortier's children. Coulson said "it wasn't clear from the discussion" where Thurlbeck had got the voicemails but his assumption was that "Neville had done this himself".

The more he listened to Thurlbeck's arguments for the story, the more he started to think there was "some public interest justification" for a story.

"I remained shocked. This was the first and only time voicemails were played to me," Coulson added.

He told the jury that he took legal advice and there was "no mention made of illegality" but that the lawyer was concerned about Blunkett's privacy."I was advised that one approach I could take was remove Kimberly Fortier's name from the story, that could minimise a privacy case," said Coulson. "Rightly or wrongly, [I thought] if I suggested to David Blunkett that we would not name Kimberly Fortier he would be more likely to confirm."

Coulson decided the best thing was to confront Blunkett directly and paid a visit to him at his Sheffield constituency office on Friday 13 August 2004, two days before the paper exposed the home secretary.

Jurors heard a tape of the conversation in which Coulson said he did not want to damage the home secretary in any way.

Two days later, the News of the World published a front-page story, headlined "Blunkett's affair with a married woman". It withheld Fortier's name, but she was identified later by the Sun.

Coulson told the jury he wished, with hindsight, that he had gone with his initial instinct and closed the story down altogether. "It is easy to say now that what we were laying out in front of him was the product of an illegal act. My view is that I kind of wish I had. It would have brought the whole thing to a head and I would have at least been able to argue my point.

"I did not know it was illegal. How it would have ended I have no idea. It could have ended in legal action. It could have ended in police action. I sincerely wish I had followed that course of action at that moment."

The jury heard that before going to Sheffield Coulson discussed the "next steps" with a News International executive, who cannot be named for legal reasons. But he said he took entire responsibility for the decision to run the story about Blunkett's affair.

"Can I make clear this conversation [with the executive] was not me seeking authorisation, or signoff or approval," said Coulson.

In separate testimony Coulson has denied that an email he sent at the News of the World instructing one of his staff to "do his phone" was in any way linked to phone hacking.

He told the jury in the hacking trial that the email was an instruction to get the phone billing data of a journalist, Rav Singh, on the paper who senior staff suspected was leaking stories to rivals.

The trial continues.