Leveson Inquiry: Police-press links ‘not corrupt’

ENDEMIC wrong doing is not evident in a report by the Independent Police Complaints Commission into corruption between police and journalists, the Leveson Inquiry heard today.

Jane Furniss, CEO and accounting officer for the IPCC was giving evidence to the inquiry today.

She said that the report, ordered by the Home Secretary last year, will be available “imminently” and will be published on the same day as it is placed before Parliament.

Asked by Lord Justice Leveson if the report will help his inquiry, Ms Furniss said: “It doesn’t reveal endemic corruption between police officers and journalists.

“It’s much wider...it will provide a lot of context.”

Ms Furniss said between 2006 and 2011 the IPCC received 5,179 complaints about improper disclosure of information but it was not possible to categorise the allegations.

She said they could range from information being sold to organised crime to an officer accessing the Police National Computer to check the suitability of his daughter’s new boyfriend.

No figure was mentioned for complaints about details being wrongly given to reporters.

She said people sometimes wrongly believed police leaked details to the media, as with allegations that police leaked wedding photographs from the Soham murder inquiry, published in the national press, when the pictures were already in the possession of other people who might have supplied them.

She said: “There are often times when people believe that information has found its way into the press as a result of leaking when actually it’s the result of people both in the police, in the IPCC, in public bodies having information and other members of families, friends, individuals providing information, and journalists who are good at this, add it all together and then it looks as if someone has leaked information.”