stroe laura: Phone hacking: Senior Met officers dined with News of the World editors

New list shows Scotland Yard officers and editors met for private dinners during the phone-hacking inquiry
? List of meetings

Senior Metropolitan police officers were enjoying private dinners with News of the World editors at the same time as the force was responsible for investigating the phone-hacking scandal, it has been disclosed.

A list of meetings that Scotland Yard has handed over to the Metropolitan Police Authority, which supervises the service, discloses eight previously unpublicised private dinners and five other occasions during which senior officers met with newspaper executives.

Two of the dinners came at particularly sensitive moments and are likely to revive fears that Scotland Yard's handling of the phone-hacking scandal may have been compromised by a desire to avoid alienating the UK's biggest-selling newspaper.

In September 2006, the then deputy commissioner, Paul Stephenson, accompanied by the Yard's director of public affairs, Dick Fedorcio, dined with the NoW's deputy editor, Neil Wallis. This was only a month after officers had arrested the paper's royal correspondent, Clive Goodman, and at a time when detectives were still trying to investigate whether other journalists or executives were involved in the interception of voicemail messages. In theory, Wallis was a potential suspect .

Scotland Yard has since been criticised for failing to interview any NoW employee other than Goodman, even though it is now known that the Met had material that suggested named journalists may have been involved in the hacking. Police also opted not to seek a production order, which would have compelled the paper to hand over internal paperwork, but instead simply wrote to their lawyers requesting a list of information, all of which was refused.

In November 2009, the list also reveals, Assistant Commissioner John Yates dined with the NoW's new editor, Colin Myler, and the paper's crime editor, Lucy Panton, who is married to a serving Scotland Yard detective. Yates had taken over responsibility for the case and, four months earlier, following revelations in the Guardian, he had decided not to reopen the inquiry.

It is not suggested the officers and editors used the dinners to come to any improper agreement. Criticism will focus on the apparent friendliness between the Met as a whole and the organisation that it had been tasked to investigate. MPs have already raised concerns about the fact that the man who headed the original inquiry in 2006, Assistant Commissioner Andy Hayman, subsequently worked for the NoW's parent company, News International, writing a regular column in the Times.

The list of meetings was disclosed by Scotland Yard following a request to the deputy commissioner, Tim Godwin, at the Metropolitan Police Authority meeting on 27 January.

The list also discloses that in 2008 and again in 2009, Stephenson had two dinners with Wallis and one dinner with Myler. In 2009, he also attended a NoW reception. Stephenson was confirmed as commissioner in January 2009.

Dee Doocey, a Liberal Democrat MPA member, said: "I find it quite extraordinary that when allegations about illegal phone-hacking relating to the News of the World were still unresolved, that the Met commissioner thought it was appropriate to be regularly dining with the News of the World. Imagine the outcry there would be if the commissioner was seen dining with a member of the public who was the subject of a police investigation."

It is not clear that this is a complete list of all contacts between Yard officers and the NoW.

At the MPA meeting, Godwin agreed to hand over details of "formal or informal meetings with officers on the investigating team and the News of the World". However, the list published today includes only meetings involving senior officers "whose purpose was for MPS officers to meet specifically with News of the World".

The list excludes meetings arranged by the Crime Reporters Association on the grounds that the NoW would not be the only newspaper present. It also excludes meetings at social events that were not organised by the paper. There is no mention, for example, of the Police Bravery Awards in July 2009, when, 10 days after the Yard had elected not to reopen its inquiry into the phone hacking, Stephenson and Yates dined with Rebekah Brooks, then editor of the Sun and the former editor of the NoW, which sponsored the awards.