Hackers may have targeted Downing Street

Tony Blair’s former communications director said he had apologised to Carole Caplin, who has been told by police that her mobile phone was hacked by the News of the World.

Mr Campbell told the inquiry into press standards yesterday that he often wondered how stories got out about Mrs Blair when she was living in Downing Street. He said he believed a story about Mrs Blair’s pregnancy printed by the Daily Mirror in 1999 could have been obtained by phone hacking.

“During various periods of the time that we were in government, we were very, very concerned about how many stories about Cherie and Carole Caplin were getting out to different parts of the media,” he said.

“I had no idea how they were getting out. In relation to not just Carole, and not just Cherie, but all of us who were involved in the government at that time, all sorts of stuff got out.

“Some of it may have got out because people who were within the government were putting it out there. Perhaps. That does happen.

“But equally there were all sorts of stories where you would just sit there scratching your head thinking, ‘How the hell did that get out?’

“I did, at times, directly accuse Carole Caplin of tipping off newspapers about what she was up to. I have since apologised because I now realise I was completely wrong.”

He told the panel that Ms Caplin said she was happy to write a letter to the inquiry giving more details.

The former No 10 communications chief added in a witness statement: “I have also never understood how the Daily Mirror learned of Cherie’s pregnancy. As I recall it, at the time only a tiny number of people in Downing Street knew that she was pregnant.

“I have heard all sorts of stories as to how the information got out, but none of them strike me as credible.”

Mr Campbell said he became suspicious his own phone might have been hacked following a meeting with former Labour culture secretary Tessa Jowell.

The ex-spin doctor also said that his medical records were kept at the home of his former GP rather than in the surgery because of fears that the media would try to obtain them.

On occasions his bank and telephone company informed him that someone pretending to be him had attempted to “blag” access to his accounts. He also said he had woken up in the middle of the night to find people going through his bins “on a couple of occasions”.

Mr Campbell said he had been contacted by Scotland Yard detectives from the Operation Weeting phone-hacking investigation who showed him references to himself and his partner in private investigator Glenn Mulcaire’s notes.

He was also visited by officers from Operation Tuleta, the police inquiry into privacy intrusions other than phone hacking, who briefed him on computer hacking, although the former spin doctor stressed he was not told he was a victim.

Mr Campbell added: “[I was] also briefed on invoices they had found, that the Mirror had paid private investigators who were looking at me and Peter Mandelson at a certain point.”

Mulcaire was jailed along with Clive Goodman, the News of the World’s former royal editor, in January 2007 after they admitted intercepting voicemail messages left on royal aides’ phones.

A draft of Mr Campbell’s witness statement was leaked at the weekend by Paul Staines, who blogs under the name Guido Fawkes. Mr Campbell told the inquiry yesterday that he sent early versions of his statement to lawyers, former political colleagues and three journalists, but said he was confident none of them would have passed it on to Mr Staines.

Inquiry chairman Lord Justice Leveson has summoned Mr Staines to give evidence today about how he obtained the document.

Prime Minister David Cameron set up the Leveson Inquiry in July in response to revelations that the News of the World commissioned Mulcaire to hack into murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler’s mobile phone after she disappeared in 2002.

The first part of the inquiry, sitting at the Royal Courts of Justice in London, is looking at the culture, practices and ethics of the press in general and is due to produce a report by next September.

The second part, examining the extent of unlawful activities by journalists, will not begin until detectives have completed their investigation into alleged phone hacking and corrupt payments to police, and any related prosecutions have been concluded.

CAMPBELL ON...

Politicians

“Most people who go into politics do so for the right reasons. And even though some of them went to jail for fiddling their expenses, and even though some of them may be incompetent and whatever, I think actually they are basically decent people, but utterly surrounded by this culture of negativity.”

Journalists

“We have a press that has just become frankly putrid in many of its elements.”

The treatment of celebrities by the press

“There comes a point with some people in public life or the entertainment industry where they are deemed to be such big figures that actually you can do and say anything and it doesn’t really matter.”

Hackers may have targeted Downing Street – Alastair Campbell