Chairman: Can I welcome you to the second part of this session. When the Guardian published their first story, you were asked to conduct a review and you concluded that no new information had been obtained and there was no reason for you to reopen the investigation. You concluded that review in a remarkably short space of time. Can you assure us of how thorough that review was?
Yates: Would it be possible, chair, just to make a few opening remarks in the first instance?
Chairman: Yes.
Here Yates goes into detail about the police investigation, which can be read in full online.
Chairman: ... The evidence which the Guardian produced and indeed gave to this committee actually came from you originally. It is evidence that was handed over to the court from the police investigation –
Yates: Yes, it was unused material.
Chairman: – which reached the Guardian. The key one, which you will be familiar with, is the email and "this is the transcript for Neville". Why did you not think that it was sufficiently important to interview Neville?
Yates: Well, again we took advice on this and it did form part of the original case and formed part of, what we call, the sensitive, unused material. There are a number of factors around it, some practical issues. Firstly, the email itself was dated, I think, 29 July 2005 and we took possession of it in August 2006, so it was already a minimum of 14 months old, that email, that is the minimum and we do not know when it was actually compiled or sent. We know from the phone company records that they are not kept for that period of time, so there was no data available behind that email. There was nothing to say that Neville, whoever Neville may be, had seen the document and, even if the person, Neville, had read the email, that is not an offence. It is no offence of conspiracy, it is no offence of phone hacking, it is no offence of any sort at all.
Chairman: Sorry to interrupt, but you say there is nothing to say whether Neville had read the email, but you could have asked him.
Yates: Well, if I can finish, there is no clear evidence as to who Neville was or who is Neville. It is supposition to suggest Neville Thurlbeck or indeed any other Neville within the News of the World or any other Neville in the journalist community. Mulcaire's computers were seized and examined. There is nothing in relation to Neville or Neville Thurlbeck in those computers and, supported by counsel latterly and by the DPP, they both are of the view, as we are, that there are no reasonable grounds to suspect that Neville has committed any offence whatsoever and no reasonable grounds to go and interview him.
Chairman: Well, it does seem an extraordinary coincidence though that somebody working for the News of the World sends an email, saying, "This is the transcript for Neville" when the chief reporter of the News of the World is called Neville and you think that this is not sufficient to ask Neville Thurlbeck whether he is the Neville referred to in the email.
Yates: Well, there is no evidence of an offence being committed, which is what I said first. There is no evidence. Reading that document is no evidence of an offence. There is no evidence that there are any other links between Neville, whoever he may be, and Mulcaire. As I say, we looked at his computers, so it is not as if we ignored this, but we looked at all of his computers, looked for the links in terms of any contact and there is no contact. As I say, both our view and the advice of leading counsel and the CPS was that there were insufficient grounds to certainly arrest or question; it would not take us any further.
Chairman: The judge in the trial actually states that Glenn Mulcaire was working for others in the News of the World besides Clive Goodman.
Yates: Yes.
Chairman: But, despite the fact that that was the clear conclusion of the court, you –
Yates: It is not quite like that. He said "worked with others". Well, of course he worked with others because that is his job. He is a private investigator and he works with journalists. He is going to be working with a number of other people.
Chairman: Let me give you an example. You knew that Mulcaire was illegally accessing the phone messages of a number of other individuals besides the people working in the royal household. Did you not seek to establish who on the News of the World might have been commissioning those intercepts?
Yates: Well, we sought the information that I have read out of the letter which I can probably redact with sense and give to the committee to see, so we did seek those issues from them and they said that there was no information there. Now, to go further, we have got to have very strong grounds to further suggest that they are misleading us and there were no grounds on that. With all investigations, you have to set parameters as to what you are trying to prove and as to what is the proper use of resources to prove that. You would be the first to criticise us if we went off fishing somewhere because it seemed like a good idea, but we have got to actually have evidence to follow and to go through, so we are limited. There was a prosecution strategy, it was not just a police strategy, it was a prosecution team strategy, which said, "These are the eight people we're going to concentrate on. That reflects the full extent of the criminality and that gives the court the greatest sentencing powers if there is a plea of guilty or if they are found guilty," and that is the way the decisions were taken in 2006.
Chairman: One of the reasons given by the DPP to us is that, in order to prove a criminal offence, you have to demonstrate that the phone message was intercepted and listened to before the intended recipient had himself opened and listened to it, and that was the criminal act. That is correct?
Yates: Yes, the analogy is the envelope and the opened letter. It is not an offence to read the opened letter, but it is an offence to open the letter and read it, and that is the analogy.
Chairman: However, let us say that somebody is accessing my voice messages and, therefore, if they get to that voice message before I have got round to listening to it, they are committing a criminal offence?
Yates: Yes.
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