There’s an interesting parallel between the phone-hacking scandal and the MPs’ expenses scandal. In both cases, the general public paid little attention to the story in its early stages: it was seen as some kind of kerfuffle in particular circles. Nothing to do with anything serious. The phone-hacking story, for example, was perceived as being just about celebs and footballers. But then there came a moment when everything changed. In the expenses scandal it was the revelation that MPs were claiming for duck-houses and having their moats cleared. In the phone-hacking story it was the discovery that the phone of Milly Dowler had been hacked — and that some messages had been deleted because her voicemail inbox was full — which misled her family into thinking that she might have been deleting messages and might therefore still be alive. At this point, public anger erupted and the game was up.

Terrific interview with Nick Davies, the main man behind the Guardian‘s unearthing of the phone-hacking story. Links to what I was saying yesterday.

From today’s Guardian.

Police are investigating evidence that a News International executive may have deleted millions of emails from an internal archive, in an apparent attempt to obstruct Scotland Yard’s inquiry into the phone-hacking scandal.

The archive is believed to have reached back to January 2005 revealing daily contact between News of the World editors, reporters and outsiders, including private investigators. The messages are potentially highly valuable both for the police and for the numerous public figures who are suing News International.

According to legal sources close to the police inquiry, a senior executive is believed to have deleted “massive quantities” of the archive on two separate occasions, leaving only a small fraction to be disclosed. One of the alleged deletions is said to have been made at the end of January this year, just as Scotland Yard was launching Operation Weeting, its new inquiry into the affair.

The allegation directly contradicts repeated claims from News International that it is co-operating fully with police in order to expose its history of illegal news-gathering. It is likely to be seen as evidence that the company could not pass a “fit and proper person” test for its proposed purchase of BSkyB.