{"id":37776,"date":"2011-07-17T22:58:49","date_gmt":"2011-07-17T19:58:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishforum.com.tr\/en\/content\/?p=37776"},"modified":"2014-01-06T14:01:29","modified_gmt":"2014-01-06T12:01:29","slug":"uk-met-police-chief-quits-amid-hacking-claims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2011\/07\/17\/uk-met-police-chief-quits-amid-hacking-claims\/","title":{"rendered":"UK: Met Police Chief Quits Amid Hacking Claims"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson has resigned amid claims relating to the phone hacking scandal.<\/h4>\n

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In a statement to announce his departure<\/strong><\/span>, Sir Paul said:<\/p>\n

“I’ve taken this decision as a consequence of the ongoing speculation and accusations relating to the Met’s links with News International at a senior level and in particular, with relation to Mr Neil Wallis who as you know was arrested as part of Operation Weeting last week.”<\/p>\n

Sir Paul had been criticised after Mr Wallis, a former deputy editor of the News Of The World, was hired by the Met in a public relations role. He said:<\/p>\n

“In 2009 the Met entered into a contractual arrangement with Neil Wallis, terminating in 2010. I played no role in the letting or management of that contract.”<\/p>\n

He also emphasised he had no reason to suspect Mr Wallis had any knowledge of phone hacking:<\/p>\n

“I have heard suggestions that we must have suspected the alleged involvement of Mr Wallis in phone hacking. Let me say unequivocally that I did not and had no reason to have done so. I do not occupy a position in the world of journalism; I had no knowledge of the extent of this disgraceful practice and the repugnant nature of the selection of victims that is now emerging; nor of its apparent reach into senior levels”<\/span><\/p>\n

He also denied there had been any wrongdoing relating to his use of the Champney’s health farm for whom Mr Wallis had been working in a PR role:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

“There has been no impropriety and I am extremely happy with what I did and the reasons for it – to do everything possible to return to running the Met full time,significantly ahead of medical, family and friends’ advice. The attempt to represent this in a negative way is both cynical and disappointing.”<\/p>\n

Sir Paul had also faced criticism over the original investigation into phone hacking.<\/p>\n

His resignation came just hours after it emerged former News International Chief Executive,\u00a0Rebekah Brooks had been arrested in connection with phone hacking.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The Mayor of London Boris Johnson told Sky News he had accepted his resignation with “great sadness and reluctance” and said there was “no question about his personal integrity.”<\/p>\n

Mr Johnson said Sir Paul had not wanted to be a distraction for the force in the run up to next year’s Olympic games.<\/p>\n

Keith Vaz, the chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee said he was “very shocked” at the Commissioner’s resignation.<\/p>\n

Mr Vaz told Sky News Sir Paul would still appear in front of the committee on Tuesday as scheduled.<\/p>\n

Sir Paul said it had been an “enormous privilege” to lead the Met.<\/p>\n

The Sky\u00a0News<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson has resigned amid claims relating to the phone hacking scandal. In a statement to announce his departure, Sir Paul said: “I’ve taken this decision as a consequence of the ongoing speculation and accusations relating to the Met’s links with News International at a senior level and in particular, with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":37777,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[94,922],"tags":[579,6459,2327,2027,9732],"class_list":["post-37776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uk","category-world","tag-boris-johnson","tag-met-police-chief","tag-news-of-the-world","tag-the-mayor-of-london","tag-uk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37776\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}