Leveson inquiry: BSKYB boss knew Sky News reporter was breaking law by hacking email accounts
The chief executive of BSkyB knew that a Sky News reporter was hacking email accounts even thought it was “a breach of the criminal law”, the Leveson Inquiry has heard.
Jeremy Darroch was “made aware” last September that reporter Gerard Tubb had been given permission by his managers to hack into the email account of Lianne Smith, who was awaiting trial for killing her children after her husband was convicted of child rape.
John Ryley, the satellite channel’s head of news, also said it would have been “obvious” to executives that Mr Tubb had hacked the emails of “canoe man” John Darwin in 2008 because of his reports based on what he found in the emails.
Despite this, Sky News made no mention of the email hacking – which is now being investigated by both the police and the broadcasting watchdog Ofcom – when the Leveson Inquiry asked it last year if it had been involved in intercepting communications.
Mr Ryley told Lord Justice Leveson it was “very regrettable indeed” that Sky News had misled the Inquiry in a letter last year.
Mr Ryley was called before the inquiry into media standards to explain why managers gave the go-ahead to Mr Tubb to access the email accounts, in an apparent breach of the Computer Misuse Act.
He has previously defended the actions of Mr Tubb, saying his investigations breached Darwin’s privacy but were in the public interest, but Lord Justice Leveson asked him: “What you were doing was not just breaching someone’s privacy, it was breaking the criminal law?”
Mr Ryley said: “It was.”
Lord Justice Leveson continued: “Where does the [Ofcom code of conduct] give the right to a breach of the criminal law?”
Mr Ryley replied: “It doesn’t.”
Simon Cole, the managing editor of Sky News at the time, resigned this month when Sky confirmed he had given authorisation to Mr Tubb to hack Darwin’s email account in 2008 and also Lianne Smith’s emails in 2011.
Asked how far up the management chain the decisions had gone, Mr Ryley said: “On Smith, I know that the chief executive of BSkyB was made aware.
“On the Darwins I think it was obvious from stories on TV that we had access to emails.”
Asked why the two matters had not been mentioned in a letter to the Leveson Inquiry last year, in which Sky News was asked to divulge any interception of communications, Mr Ryley said the company had been concentrating on phone hacking and that led to the “inaccurate assertion” for which he apologised.
Earlier this month Cleveland Police launched an investigation into the accessing by Mr Tubb of an email account opened by John Darwin in the name of John Jones while he was living in Panama having earlier faked his death in a canoe accident.
Today the broadcasting watchdog Ofcom also announced its own investigation.
Mr Tubb was nominated for a prestigious award for his reporting of the Darwin story after his discovery of emails between John Darwin and his wife Anne, which were handed to the police, led to her changing her defence to one of marital duress.
Darwin, who fled to Panama after faking his own death at sea but returned to the UK in 2007, had by this point already been convicted for defrauding insurance companies out of £250,000.
The reporter found exchanges between Darwin and his wife proving that she was party to the scam. He found a detailed spreadsheet of the couple's plans, as well as an email from Darwin to his wife explaining that changes to visa restrictions meant he could no longer stay in Panama.
She was later convicted of fraud and sentenced to six and a half years imprisonment.
David Barr, counsel to the inquiry, suggested to Mr Ryley that Mr Tubb was “investigating the crime rather than reporting it”.
He referred to an email in which Mr Tubb had told his line manager emails had been deleted from an account, to which the manager replied: “Bad luck inspector.”
Mr Ryley insisted his reporter was simply “researching the story of the Darwins”.
BSkyB is partly-owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, which also owns News International, whose newspapers are being investigated for phone and email hacking.
Sky News has stood by Mr Tubb, saying that obtaining the information was “in the public interest”, but legal experts have suggested his actions appeared to breach the Computer Misuse Act 1990, which has no public interest defence.
Mr Ryley said he was “probably not as aware as I should have been” of the Computer Misuse Act.
In September 2011 Mr Tubb hacked the email account of Martin Smith, who fled to Spain with his wife Lianne and daughter Rebecca after falling under suspicion for child sex abuse.
The previous year Mrs Smith had killed Rebecca, five, and the couple’s son Daniel, 11 months, then tried to kill herself after her husband was extradited to the UK.
Mr Tubb found an email address being used by Lianne Smith in Barcelona, where she was running a nursery, and given authorisation by his bosses to hack into it. What he found in the email account did not result in a story being broadcast.
Smith, a former TV psychic, was convicted of rape and in January he was found hanged in his prison cell. Mrs Smith is still awaiting trial in Spain over the deaths of her children.
Last year News of the World was closed down due to phone hacking allegations, and earlier this month James Murdoch stood down as chairman of BSkyB ahead of a report by MPs into the scandal.
BSkyB is also subject to an investigation by Ofcom, the communications watchdog, into whether it is a "fit and proper" holder of a broadcasting licence in the wake of the phone hacking scandal.
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