Hacking jury discharged after failure to reach verdicts

Commenting after the phone hacking trial jury was discharged after failing to reach verdicts on two charges involving Andy Coulson, the CPS said the "lengthy and complex trial" was required to "explore a culture of invading privacy" and it has not yet decided whether to retry the outstanding counts.

Greg McGill, a senior lawyer for the Crown Prosecution Service said:

Read: Phone hacking trial in numbers

Labour MP Chris Bryant has told ITV News that the parent company of the News of the World was "drunk on the amount of power they could wield on politicians".

Mr Bryant said News International had "started to believe that they were above the law".

The Rhondda MP said: "Leave aside the original criminality of hacking people's phones - including the victims of crime who never asked to be brought into the public domain at all - it's the cover-up, the lies.

"'This was just one reporter,' 'This was just one newspaper,' when actually we know it was endemic in the whole of News International."

The Metropolitan Police has "done our best to follow the evidence without fear or favour" in the phone hacking investigation, assistant commissioner Cressida Dick has said.

She said in a press conference, "We were acutely conscious of the sensitivities of investigating a newspaper and people employed by a newspaper, and inevitably dealing with confidential journalistic material.

"This investigation has never been about an attack on press freedom ... we were determined to make sure that justice was done."

David Cameron was "unwise" to have spoken out about the phone hacking conviction of ex-No 10 press chief Andy Coulson before the case was concluded, Cabinet veteran Ken Clarke has said.

The Prime Minister was heavily criticised by the trial judge at the Old Bailey after he yesterday issued a public apology for employing Coulson while the jury was still considering other charges.

Mr Clarke, a qualified QC and a former lord chancellor, told BBC Radio 4's The World at One that Mr Cameron had appeared not to have considered the legal implications when he made his remarks

"There obviously wasn't a lawyer sitting around when they were being pressed by the public and the press to give comments on the news that had come out," he added.

Labour has said leader Ed Miliband was careful in his televised statement yesterday not to raise issues of Andy Coulson's character or the facts of the trial.

However, Mr Miliband did refer to the Prime Minister's former director of communications as a "criminal" - a fact "which had been established by the jury itself".

"It seems to us that these are matters between the judge and the Prime Minister," a senior Labour source said.

"We were reacting to the Prime Minister's statement. We were responsible in our reaction to the Prime Minister's statement," they added.

David Cameron took "the best legal advice" before making his televised apology yesterday, Downing Street has said.

However, the spokesperson declined to say whether the advice had come from Attorney General Dominic Grieve.

Read: Tom Bradby's report on why the Prime Minister chose to apologise yesterday

The hacking trial judge asked David Cameron for an explanation over his "ill-advised and premature intervention" in the case and was told by his principal private secretary: "The Prime Minister was responding to the guilty verdict on hacking charges that had been delivered in open court.

"He did this in the light of the intense media coverage and understandable public interest."

But the judge said Mr Cameron had "missed the point" and revealed information the jury had not been told during the trial for legal reasons.

"My sole concern is to ensure that justice is done. Politicians have other imperatives and I understand that. Whether the political imperative was such that statements could not await all the verdicts, I leave to others to judge."

The judge in the phone hacking trial considered halting proceedings earlier today after Andy Coulson's lawyer criticised the Prime Minister's "ill-advised and premature intervention" in the case, it can now be reported.

It follows the "full and frank apology" David Cameron made yesterday over Mr Coulson's appointment at Number 10.