Milly Dowler - Leveson 2 In One

Some media watchers might have noticed talk this week of “Leveson 2” and wondered why there should be another Inquiry, given the length and rigour of the first one. And we know that the Government would rather it did not happen, as Politics Home has told. But then, events come together to remind the public just why there was a first Leveson Inquiry, and show in stark clarity why its second part must go ahead.

As the BBC has reported, “The first part of the inquiry, in 2011-2012, examined press ethics, but hearings into ties between newspapers and the police were put on hold amid criminal inquiries over phone hacking”. Ties between newspapers and the Police. That, as Nick Watt at the Guardian has told, means revisiting the brutal murder of private detective Daniel Morgan in 1987. And it also means the case of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler.

Just as those wanting calls for Leveson 2 to go away may have thought the Daniel Morgan case had not pricked the public conscience sufficiently, the full horror of the Milly Dowler case returned to prominence with some force, as it was revealed that her killer, Levi Bellfield, had kept Milly alive for 14 hours after initially abducting her, and subjected her to a catalogue of abuse which we do not need to describe further.

Worse, the Police only let the Dowler family know this because Bellfield had told another prison inmate, who was due for release and might have sold his information to the press. That is bad enough. But through both the Daniel Morgan and Milly Dowler cases runs a thread of corruption, of one newspaper deliberately hindering Police investigations, and that paper was the now-defunct Murdoch Screws.

It was the Screws that was caught working with Southern Investigations - the firm Daniel Morgan was a partner in before his murder - snooping on the senior Police officer charged with re-opening the case. The surveillance was so intrusive that Rebekah Wade, as she then was, was hauled in by the Met, only to come out with one of the World’s Lamest Excuses - they thought DCI Dave Cook and DS Jacqui Hames were having an affair.

It was one of the World’s Lamest Excuses because Cook and Ms Hames were married - to one another. And the Screws was later caught interfering in the Dowler case, bullying the Police into going on a wild goose chase to Telford, because an employment agency there had dialled a wrong number, and the Screws was hacking Milly’s phone, having blagged her number and PIN from her classmates.

Worse, the Murdoch hacks took information to the Police that they had very obviously obtained by hacking the dead girl’s phone. The cops took that information and did nothing about the hacking. Then the Screws ran a story about a “Hoaxer”. But there was no hoaxer. All there was was a dead schoolgirl having her phone hacked in the pursuit of selling a few more papers. That is the justification for Leveson 2 in one.

And the Daniel Morgan case should not be forgotten: as Nick Watt suggests, the truth of the private detective’s death rests on Leveson 2 being enacted. We owe it not just to the Dowler family, once again thrust back into the spotlight, but Alastair Morgan, who has campaigned tirelessly to reveal the facts behind his brother’s killing. And we owe it to all the other victims of the corrupt police-media nexus. That is all.