THE SUNDAY Worldmade dozens of requests for private information, including criminal records and car-registration numbers, from a private investigator subsequently prosecuted for breaches of the Data Protection Act in the UK, it was alleged yesterday at the Leveson inquiry.
A former investigator for the British information commissioner told the inquiry into press standards in Britain that his senior management were scared to prosecute newspapers over their dealings with the private investigator, Steve Whittamore.
In written testimony, Alex Owens said the commissioner's 2006 report into the acquisition of confidential information in the UK listed the Sunday Worldas having used Mr Whittamore once.
However, Mr Owens, who led the investigation, dubbed Operation Motorman, disputed the figure. "One only has to look at the figures for the Sunday World, which is bottom of the league and is quoted as having one journalist who made one inquiry.
“The evidence indicates this one journalist in fact made 24 requests for information from Whittamore, and there is no way these 24 requests could be defined as a single request.
"The true figure would have moved the Sunday Worldto midway in the table, on a par with the Sunand Closermagazine.
Mr Owens, replying to the inquiry’s counsel Robert Jay, said the requests covered “criminal records, vehicle numbers”, adding: “They weren’t just all connected to one person. They were not like 24 requests in relation to one individual. There may have been a couple of requests in relation to one individual. I didn’t count how many individuals, but there has got to be four, or five.”
Last night the newspaper strongly disputed Mr Owens's version of events: "When the Sunday Worldbecame aware in July that it had been mentioned in the Operation Motorman report as having made one request for information from Steve Whittamore, the newspaper contacted the information commissioner directly."
The Sunday Worldhad not been contacted before publication or at any time since, it said.
The information commissioner provided details of the request attributed to the Sunday Worldreporter: "It would appear . . . that the request was to establish addresses and place of residence of an individual who was, at that time, indicating that he was going to give evidence at the Flood tribunal in the late 1990s.
"The information commissioner told the Sunday Worldthis year that inclusion in the Motorman report did not imply any illegality.
"Notwithstanding this assertion of a lack of illegality, the Sunday Worlddoes not believe that even this one request for information should have been attributed to the newspaper. Neither the reporter, who has not worked at the newspaper for many years, nor anyone else at the publication, has any knowledge of a Steve Whittamore.
“What Mr Owens said today is completely inconsistent with all the official communications we have had with the information commissioner’s office.”
Saying that the head of the information commissioner’s office had “grossly understated” the scale of the inquiries made for confidential information, Mr Owens said it was later claimed that 3,500 requests for information had been made to Mr Whittamore, when his records put the real number at 17,500.
Instead of 77 requests from five journalists from the Dailyand Sunday Sport,Mr Owens said one alone had used Mr Whittamore 220 times, while the Sunday Timesmade 100 requests, not four as listed in the final report. The Evening Standarddid so 290 times, not 130 times, he said.
British prime minister David Cameron set up the Leveson inquiry in July in response to revelations that the News of the Worldcommissioned private detective Glenn Mulcaire to hack schoolgirl Milly Dowler's phone after she disappeared in 2002.