Kit Malthouse repeatedly told Scotland Yard it was devoting too many resources to investigation, Leveson inquiry was told
Boris Johnson says he wants to see any journalist involved in phone hacking feel "the full consequences of the law" after his office came under fire over the fact his deputy Kit Malthouse had complained to Scotland Yard on "several occasions" that it was devoting too many resources to the News of the World phone-hacking investigation.
The Conservative mayor came to the defence of his head of policing and crime at a statutory question time eventin Hammersmith on Wednesday night after a member of the audience challenged Malthouse to explain why he sought to "prevent" the police investigation into phone-hacking allegations.
The question referred to evidence submitted by the former Metropolitan police commissioner Sir Paul Stevenson to the Leveson inquiry earlier this week in which he said that Malthouse complained to Scotland Yard on "several occasions" that it was devoting too many resources to the News of the World phone-hacking investigation.
In his written statement to the inquiry, Stephenson said: "On several occasions after Operation Weeting had started and I had returned from sick leave, the chair of the MPA [Metropolitan Police Authority], Kit Malthouse, expressed a view that we should not be devoting this level of resources to the phone-hacking inquiry as a consequence of a largely political and media-driven 'level of hysteria'," Stephenson wrote.
Before Malthouse, who was chairing the event, could answer, Johnson told the audience that he wanted the police to do "what they need to do" to see through the investigation.
The mayor came under fire himself last week after saying on ITV he wanted to "knock [the investigation] on the head as fast as we can", because it was "tying up" police time. Johnson, who famously dismissed the original allegations of widespread phone hacking as "a load of codswallop cooked up by the Labour party", told a packed room at Hammersmith town hall that he and Malthouse were determined the investigations should go on to their conclusion.
"We are determined to see this thing go on until … journalists, whatever newspaper group they belong to, if they've broken the law, and indeed if any public servants have broken the law, then they need to feel the full consequences of the law."
Johnson controversially handed over the reins of the MPA to Malthouse, a London assembly member and his deputy mayor for policing, in early 2010. Malthouse is now the head of the mayor's office for policing and crime, which is the successor to the MPA and in effect makes him the country's first police commissioner.
Malthouse, a former deputy leader of Westminster council, told the audience that he had raised his doubts because he felt "and still feel" that the resources could be better deployed.
Prefacing his comments with the need for caution because of his appearance at the Leveson inquiry later this month, Malthouse told the audience: "When I was chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority, my job was to challenge the allocation of resources by the commissioner and that's because I wanted to make sure that he was allocating enough resources to the issues that concern Londoners like knife crime, teenage killings, rape and violence.
"At the time, the police was allocating a lot of resources to this investigation, and I needed to make sure that that was justified against all the other priorities that the commissioner had to address.
"There were 90-odd police officers at the time going through documents … I did not feel and still don't feel that that particular process was as important as solving a rape or preventing a teenage killing and I wanted to make sure the commissioner had his priorities balanced across all the crime types that he had to face. There was nothing secret about it.
"Indeed, a number of members of the police authority, who are sitting here, did exactly the same in public at the time – challenged the commissioner about the allocation of resources. That's all I was doing."
Malthouse sparked tensions with the Met in 2009 when he said that the Conservative administration at city hall had decided to be "more influential" over Scotland Yard.