Police defend scale of investigation into journalists

The Metropolitan police has defended its investigation into alleged hacking and payments to public officials, saying the resources devoted to the operations were not "in any way disproportionate to the enormous task in hand".

The force issued a statement last night after Sun associate editor Trevor Kavanagh condemned the investigations in an article and a series of interviews. He said the Sun journalists arrested at the weekend were "subjects of the biggest police operation in British criminal history - bigger even than the Pan Am Lockerbie murder probe" and that "major crime investigations" were on hold as a result.

In a statement last night, the Met confirmed that 169 officers were working on Operations Weeting (phone-hacking), Elveden (payments to public officials) and Tuleta (data intrusion).

The force said the three linked investigations were "extremely difficult and complex with literally millions of pieces of documentation needing to be scrutinised and examined".

It added: "Given the seriousness of the allegations currently under investigation and the significant number of victims, the MPS does not believe that the level of resources devoted to the three inquiries is in any way disproportionate to the enormous task in hand.

"There are 169 officers and staff currently deployed to the three linked investigations. These resources are constantly reviewed and where they relate to corrupt payments to police officers the IPCC have oversight.

The Met insisted that "at no stage has any major investigation been compromised as a result of these deployments".

Responding to Kavanagh's claim that "up to 20 officers at a time" carried out the dawn raids, the Met said: "We would like to make it clear that no more than ten MPS officers attended each of the home addresses of the persons arrested as part of Operation Elveden on Saturday, 11 February.

"It should be noted that several officers are needed for the thorough and efficient search of an address, including, where appropriate, specialist search teams."

The police statement also confirmed that the arrests were the "result of information provided to officers by News Corporation's Management Standards Committee" (MSC) - the independent group set up by News International to co-operate with the police investigation.

Kavanagh said in a series of interviews yesterday that there was "unease" about the MSC's work.

He told BBC Radio FiveLive: "There is certainly a mood of unhappiness that the company proudly, certain parts of the company - not News International I hasten to add, not the newspaper side of the operation - actually boasting that they are sending information to police that has put these people into police cells.

"We are not opposed to the fact that we are co-operating with the police. If we are to get through this we need to provide them with all the co-operation we can. I think that perhaps what would be best is if we left them [the police] to go through the evidence and find out what they can."

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