Gordon Brown seeks criminal inquiry over email deletions by Murdoch's News Group

The former prime minister Gordon Brown has made a new complaint to the Metropolitan police over allegations that Rupert Murdoch's newspaper empire obstructed justice, after stating he had spoken to officers involved in the original phone-hacking inquiry.

- Michael Savage

Writing in the Guardian, Brown said one of the detectives alleged they believed there was "significant evidence" that News Group Newspapers (NGN) deleted millions of emails to pervert the course of justice. He said former officers told him that if they had been aware of the background to the email deletions, they would have pushed for further action.

Brown wrote that one former officer told him: "If we had known this in 2011, we would have investigated fully and taken a different course of action including considering arrests."

He wrote: "I am making a criminal complaint to the Met and Crown Prosecution Service alleging that I am, along with many others, a victim of the obstruction of the course of justice by News Group. This is not an allegation made lightly. It is informed by recently available evidence, and by the statements of senior officers involved in the original investigations into unlawful news gathering, who have now stated to me that they were misled."

NGN says it strenuously denies any allegations of evidence destruction and that the CPS concluded in 2015 there was no evidence that company email deletions were carried out to pervert the course of justice.

In January, NGN apologised to Prince Harry for phone hacking by journalists at its former Sunday tabloid, the News of the World, and the "serious intrusion by the Sun between 1996 and 2011 into his private life, including incidents of unlawful activities carried out by private investigators working for the Sun". The apology was part of an out-of-court settlement to end litigation brought by the prince and Tom Watson, a former Labour deputy leader who became a peer in 2022.

Brown said the settlement had "not closed an era of investigation and litigation into media corruption. It has opened it up."