Link to story: https://www.bylineinvestigates.com/mirror/2020/1/22/a6qgcu489qri8ui5okbddo1zez2q3sCommenting, Hacked Off Policy Director Nathan Sparkes said,

“When it was revealed that the News of the World hacked Milly Dowler’s phone it was recognised as one of the most serious failures of journalistic decency and ethics of the last two decades, yet Part Two of the Leveson Inquiry – designed to get to the bottom of phone hacking – was cancelled by the Government in 2018, to cheers from the largest newspapers. If the allegations that an agency acting for the Sunday People also targeted Milly Dowler’s voicemail messages are true, then the Sunday People’s owners, Reach plc, will have serious questions to answer about why only now this is coming to light. The Government will face accusations of complicity in any cover-up, having cancelled the only means of exposing the true of extent of phone hacking and other illegality at national newspapers: Leveson Part Two. Almost 18 years after Milly’s death, there is still so much we don’t know about the activities of the newspapers who targeted her phone for stories at the time and their relationship with the police, who knew that the News of the World hacked Milly’s phone back in 2002 but failed to act. Until the Government launch the Leveson Part Two Public Inquiry, we never will.”

ENDS

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NOTES

Hacked Off is the campaign for a free and accountable press, and we work with the victims of press abuse to achieve those aims.