MPs 'have to wash dirty linen in public'

Published on Tuesday 12 July 2011 19:02

POLITICIANS must go through the "awful experience" of having their "dirty linen washed in public" to get to the truth about phone hacking, Milly Dowler's family have said.

At a meeting in Westminster with Labour leader Ed Miliband yesterday, the murdered schoolgirl's parents, Bob and Sally, urged him to push for an in-depth investigation, even though it may cause embarrassment to politicians.

The Dowlers' solicitor Mark Lewis said "even now" it was still possible for the Press to lobby politicians not to start the kind of inquiry that was needed.

Mr Lewis said the Dowler family were urging politicians to be "fearless" and to "stand up to the Press".

He added: "What they said to Ed Miliband was that they have had to go through having their dirty linen washed in public, they have had to go through this awful experience, and now it is time for politicians to have to go through the same experience to find out the truth of the position in respect to Press intrusion into their lives and how it had been fermented by the relationship between the Press and politicians."

Convicted double killer Levi Bellfield, 43, was sentenced to a whole-life term last month after being found guilty of murdering Milly, 13, in 2002.

After yesterday's meeting, a senior Labour source said Mr Miliband would now work with the coalition leaders to get the wide-ranging judge-led inquiry the Dowlers want to see.

"The judge-led inquiry should not look just at a narrow set of issues, it must look at the relationship between the police and the newspaper industry, it needs to look at the relationship between the politicians and the papers, and it needs to get started straight away," the source said.