Ex-minister may have been targeted

Labour’s Peter Hain has been warned his computer may have been hacked while he was Northern Ireland Secretary, it has emerged.

Scotland Yard told Mr Hain it is examining evidence that his files, and those of senior civil servants and intelligence agents, were targeted by private detectives who may have been working for News International, it was reported.

The shadow Welsh Secretary had access to classified details during his two years in the role, including highly sensitive information about informers.

Meanwhile, Jeremy Hunt has told a parliamentary committee the phone hacking scandal would have emerged earlier if the police had not ended their inquiry “at a very early stage”.

The Culture Secretary told the House of Lords communications committee that the failure to uncover the story was not “a failure of investigative journalism”.

Asked by Labour peer Lord Bragg why it had taken so long for the scandal to come to light, Mr Hunt said: “A lot of the reason for why it took so long was the police closed down their inquiry at a very early stage so the opportunity for evidence to emerge publicly, which might have led to this issue being addressed much earlier, was closed down”.