Full coverage as the former NoW head of legal affairs, Farrer & Co lawyer and ex-Harbottle & Lewis lawyer give evidence
12.41pm: Josh Halliday has just tweeted this from the Glenn Mulcaire case in the high court:
Mulcaire's solicitor now being cross examined by News Group barrister.
12.37pm: Jay is now raising the question of a settlement between News International and Max Clifford and refers to a meeting with Rebekah Brooks in January or February 2010.
Jay asks Pike if is it correct that a settlement higher than advised was offered.
He asks Pike whether he agrees that News International was willing to pay "an over-value to avoid reputational damage".
Pike says he is getting into privileged territory and cannot answer this.
12.34pm: Jay asks Pike if did he not "harbour doubts" as far back as 2007 when the News of the World's former royal editor was convicted and Mulcaire admitted other people's phones had been hacked. He says these other people would have been "outside the bailiwick" of a royal editor.
"Speaking generally one can have suspicions," says Pike, but he did not have evidence of this.
12.33pm: Julian Pike is now giving evidence. He agrees with Robert Jay, QC for the inquiry, that it was in April 2008 "he no longer believed the rogue reporter defence".
12.29pm: Josh Halliday has just tweeted this from the Glenn Mulcaire case in the high court:
Mulcaire lawyer reading email exchange between Mulcaire and his solicitor, and his solicitor and Julian Pike re indemnity arrangement.
12.29pm: Abramson has now finished giving evidence. Julian Pike from Farrer & Co is up next.
12.28pm: The levbeson inquiry hears that News International's Jon Chapman made "some suggestions to the draft email that Abramson sent him" regarding the emails.
He suggest a penultimate sentence to say that Harbottle & Lewis did not see anything "relevant" to the grounds of appeal put forward by Goodman who had been sacked.
Abramson told Chapman he could not add this sentence.
Asked why, Abramson replies:
It wasn't the exercise we had been asked to conduct … to have then signed off an opinion that was much wider would have been wholly wrong and I couldn't have done that.
12.25pm: The Leveson inquiry now hears that others in Harbottle & Lewis considered emails back to 2003.
Abramson says he did not consider these emails at any point while he was working under the News International instructions between 24 May 2007 and end of June 2007.
Jay: Are you sure that he did not look at the 2003 emails?
Abramson: 'Sure' is a high threshold to something that happened four years ago, but the best of my recollection I don't believe I saw those emails.
Jay asks if he has since seen the 2003 emails – and if he had seen them back in May 2007, would his advice have been the same or different?
Abramson: "Different."
12.23pm: Josh Halliday has just tweeted this from the Glenn Mulcaire case in the high court:
Mulcaire lawyer: Mulcaire "told Tom Crone in 2007 that it was not just Goodman but Ian Edmondson who had been tasking him"
12.22pm: On 19 June 2007, Abramson received the full transcript from the central criminal court on the sentencing of Goodman in January that year.
12.19pm: Josh Halliday has just tweeted this from the Glenn Mulcaire case in the high court:
Mulcaire lawyer says Crone and Pike haven't submitted witness statements after earlier suggestions they would.
12.15pm: Abramson in his draft advice to News International said:
I confirm we did not find any evidence that proved any redacted names knew that Clive Goodman, Glenn Mulcaire or any other journalist at the NoW were engaged in illegal activites prior to the arrest.
The final advice was given on 29 May was similar. Abramson confirms that "we did not find anything" that proved "that Clive Goodman's illegal actions were known about".
Jay refers to instructions from News International on 10 May and says they perhaps set out "a lower test" for Abramson.
12.11pm: Abramson says he brought in another assistant to provide advice on the employment matter in relation to Goodman.
Robert Jay, counsel for the inquiry, asks if the concern, as well as concern over an unfair dismisal case, was to limit any adverse publicity.
Abramson replies; "Yes, I think that's right."
12.10pm: Abramson says the emails might have been "potentially embarassing" for News International. Asked what might have been embarrassing, he says:
They showed confidential sources, concerns about confidential sources, cash payments.
They revealed quite an active involvement in Clive Goodman's prosecution … [how News International] tried to influence how the defence was conducted, and one email which has been redacted that showed [Jay then stops Abramson].
The earliest email in the Abramson investigation was sent in 2005.
12.07pm: On 24 May, Abramson had a longer conversation with Chapman lasting 28 minutes.
He was concerned that about "a dozen emails" felt outside the scope of the instructions and wanted to speak to Chapman about them.
At this stage, they don't fall out the date range. They fell outside what I had been asked to consider because they did not suport Mr Goodman's allegations.
Asked what his concern was, Abramson replies:
My concern was that there was possiblity this might reach a tribunal and News would have much wider disclosure obligations. I felt these showed News in one way or another in an unfavourable light.
12.03pm: Abramson explains what emails he saw:
The emails I saw were those that were brought to my attention by the junior lawyers. They did the initial trawl … there were also a bundle of emails that arrived by Daniel Cloke in hard copy that he wanted me to look at.
12.03pm: On 14 May a standard "retainer letter" was sent to Chapman by Abramson.
The review was undertaken by two lawyers and one trainee under his supervision.
12.00pm: At this point Clive Goodman had already been convicted.
Jon Chapman, News International's former former head of corporate and legal affairs, wrote that on 5 February 2007, the company had terminated the employment contract of the former royal editor Goodman, who had just been convicted for phone-hacking offences. There was reference to Glenn Mulcaire. Abramson was faxed a copy of the termination letter.
Goodman requested certain emails in a letter dated 14 March.
Chapman explained he and Daniel Cloke, the then head of human resources at News International, had gone through internal emails to see if there was any evidence to support Goodman's claims that there were others involved in phone hacking.
Abramson was then asked to engage in an independent inquiry to see if there was any material in the emails that could "support Mr Goodman's contentions".
11.53am: Mulcaire was paid £105,000.
Abramson is talking about a conversation with a senior executive at News International over his initial instructions.
His notes show that other journalists used Mulcaire. He tells Leveson, however, that he doesn't think he was being told that Mulcaire was being used for phone hacking but for legitimate reasons.
11.52am: Back to Leveson. Abramson is talking about the emails he was asked to look at by News International following claims by the News of the World's former royal editor Clive Goodman that "two others" were aware of his activities (phone hacking).
11.51am: Josh Halliday reports the News of the World executive who allegedly tasked Glenn Mulcaire has been named in open court.
11.46am: The inquiry has now opened. The first witness is lawyer Lawrence Abramson.
Abramson explains he is a litigator and has specialised in the media industries.
11.44am: Mulcaire has also claimed in the high court that he told former News of the World legal affairs manager Tom Crone that he told him there was more than one reporter involved in phone hacking in 2007.
Josh Halliday tweets:
Mulcaire lawyer: Mulcaire "told Tom Crone in 2007 that it was not just Goodman but a named editor who had been tasking him"
Crone is about to give evidence a few hundreds metres away in court 73 where the Leveson inquiry is taking place.
11.41am: Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator at the centre of the phone-hacking scandal, feels that Rupert Murdoch's News Group Newspapers should have paid more for "his silence".
Josh Halliday has just tweeted from the Mulcaire case:
Mulcaire lawyer: Glenn "feels let down by News Group … He feels News Group should be paying more for his silence"
11.40am: The Leveson inquiry will open shortly.
In the meantime, we have noticed an announcement on the Leveson website that Paul McMullan's witness statement will not be published "as it was not adduced in evidence".
McMullan was the former deputy features editor of the paper who memorably told the inquiry how chasing cars in celebrities was "great fun" before Princess Diana died and how he thought "privacy is for paedos".
11.22am: My colleagues Josh Halliday is in the high court covering private investigator Glenn Mulcaire's case against News International.
Mulcaire is suing the publisher for breach of contract after it decided to pull funding for his defence in phone-hacking court cases.
He has been named on dozens of claims relating to civil actions.
Josh tweets:
Mulcaire lawyer says "legality has been a casualty" in some parts of the media. That forms "unhappy background" to this claim.
Mulcaire lawyer: despite "muscular rhetoric" from MPs, nothing "exotic, unusual or improper" about NGN prior agreement to pay Mulcaire fees.
Mulcaire lawyer says NGN agreed to indemnify him in Max Clifford case but that was overtaken by "rapid settlement" in Jan 2010.
Mulcaire email read by lawyer: don't believe documents in Sky Andrews case "were escalated in NI as in Gordon Taylor matter."
11.16am: Good morning and welcome to day 16 of the Leveson inquiry.
Today the main witness will be Tom Crone, the former legal affairs manager at the News of the World.
He has become a central figure in the phone-hacking scandal. Earlier this year Crone and the paper's former editor Colin Myler claimed they made James Murdoch aware of widespread hacking within the organisation as long ago as 2008.
He is unlikely to be quizzed about this as phone hacking is more or less off the agenda at the Leveson inquiry.
However he is expected to be questioned about his involvement in the decision to allegedly launch a covert surveillance operation on two lawyers representing phone-hacking victims.
Last week one of those lawyers, Mark Lewis, told Leveson that News International sought to "destroy" his life.
Two other lawyers will also give evidence - Julian Pike, a partner at Farrer & Co which has acted at News International advisers for many years.
He worked closely with Crone on the company's settlement with Gordon Taylor, the chief executive of the Professional Footballers' Association.
He was also allegedly involved in a decision relating to the covert surveillance of two of the leading lawyers representing phone-hacking victims – Charlotte Harris and Mark Lewis.
Pike told a parliamentary select committee in October that he had seen evidence in 2008 that suggested there was "a powerful case" that an additional three News of the World journalists were "illegally accessing information in order to obtain stories", and had informed NI of this.
The third witness today is Lawrence Abramson, a former partner with solicitors Harbottle & Lewis, who were hired by News International to review around 2,500 internal emails following claims by the News of the World's former royal editor Clive Goodman that his editor, Andy Coulson, knew about phone hacking and that others on the paper were involved in the same activity.
He now works at another law firm, Fladgate.
13 Dec, 2011 --
Source:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/blog/2011/dec/13/leveson-inquiry-tom-crone-julian-pike-live~
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Jessica Colwell 
