Police chief Andy Hayman paid for champagne dinners with News of the World journalists

Phone hacking: Police chief Andy Hayman paid for champagne dinners with News of the World journalists

The senior Scotland Yard officer accused of failing to fully investigate the phone hacking scandal enjoyed champagne dinners with News of the World journalists paid for using his Metropolitan Police corporate credit card.


By Robert Mendick, Chief reporter

7:30AM BST 24 Jul 2011

Andy Hayman, the former Met assistant commissioner, quit the police in 2007, a month after an investigation was launched into his expenses.

Mr Hayman spent £19,000 in two years on his corporate credit card and a further £2,000 on another credit card given to him by the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo).

Two months after his resignation, he landed a job with News International, writing for The Times on security and terrorism.

The Sunday Telegraph understands his contract has been terminated in the wake of the phone hacking scandal.

Mr Hayman's spending sparked a secret investigation by Gwent police, whose findings have never been made public.


It is understood they include details of long lunches and dinners with News of the World journalists at a time when the newspaper was under investigation for phone hacking.

On one occasion he bought a £50 bottle of champagne which he drank with a News of the World reporter.

The arrangement is unusual because normally a journalist would pay to entertain a police contact - and not the other way around.

Details of Mr Hayman's extravagant entertaining are to be published in a book written by Peter Tickner, the Met Police's former Director of Internal Audit.

His inquiries into Mr Hayman's credit card bills - which added up to more than the rest of the Met's senior management board added together - sparked the inquiry that led to the officer's resignation in December 2007.

Mr Tickner told The Sunday Telegraph: "I was alarmed by the size of spending on Andy Hayman's corporate credit card and that is why I asked for a full explanation of his spending. I found out that a large amount was spent on alcohol on his card."

Mr Tickner told The Sunday Telegraph the corporate cards were issued to officers and were intended for use on assignments outside London, including overseas trips.

But Mr Tickner found much of Mr Hayman's spending was on entertaining colleagues and journalists in and around Scotland Yard.

He said officers were not supposed to drink on duty and that he was surprised by the amount of alcohol being claimed back on expenses by Mr Hayman.

Mr Hayman was also investigated over foreign trips taken with his then staff officer Heidi Tubby, who had spent a further £8,000 on her Acpo credit card.

Inspector Tubby, who was not under investigation, was Mr Hayman's staff officer in Norfolk when he was chief constable before taking up his job as assistant commissioner in charge of anti-terrorism.

Mr Tickner, in his forthcoming book - the Successful Frauditor's Casebook - writes: "It was patently clear to me that the senior officer had treated the Met's credit card as an accessory for whatever purpose he deemed fit, including buying food and alcohol for journalists and entertaining his management team at a restaurant at public expense where the cost of alcohol equalled the cost of food.

"In one twenty-four hour period, he had used the card on three separate occasions to buy alcohol.

"First, an evening meal for himself and his female staff officer away from London on official business, then the following lunchtime to buy alcohol and food at what I suspected was a farewell lunch for a member of his senior team.

"Finally, much later that same evening he had used the card to buy a bottle of champagne, although according to his official diary he was meeting a female journalist for a one-to-one briefing.

"It wasn't fraud but it certainly wasn't a proper use of public funds."

A committee of MPs last week castigated Mr Hayman for his handling of the initial phone hacking inquiry in 2005 to 2006 and for the evidence he gave to the Home Affairs Select Committee.

Mr Hayman oversaw the initial investigation into hacking of the mobile phones of Princes William and Harry, which led to the jailing of the News of the World's Royal reporter Clive Goodman and the private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, who worked exclusively for the newspaper.

Mr Mulcaire's notebooks, containing 11,000 pages with the names of as many as 4,000 victims - including the murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler - were seized by police in 2006 but never fully investigated at the time.

Last week, the Home Affairs Select Committee, in its report into hacking, concluded Mr Hayman's conduct during the investigation was "both unprofessional and inappropriate".

The committee, chaired by Keith Vaz, criticised "Andy Hayman's cavalier attitude towards his contacts with those in News International who were under investigation which, even if entirely above board, risked seriously undermining confidence in the impartiality of the police, and accuses him of deliberate prevarication in order to mislead the committee".

The Sunday Telegraph revealed last week how Mr Hayman had dined with the then editor and deputy editor of the News of the World at the height of the inquiry.

Both men Andy Coulson and Neil Wallis have since been arrested on suspicion of phone hacking.

But the full extent of his close relationship with news International journalists has never been made fully clear. Only some of the hospitality he enjoyed with journalists is declared in his official hospitality register.

Mr Hayman failed to return calls to the Sunday telegraph last week. But when he quit in 2007, he said he had been the victim of a series of "leaks and unfounded accusations" which he strongly refuted.

He has insisted that his relationship with News International played no role in the decision not to investigate other journalists at the newspaper.

News International has been accused of "deliberately thwarting" the original police inquiry, making it difficult for detectives to secure further convictions without its cooperation.

The phone hacking investigation was reopened in January, only after News International handed further emails to police, providing apparent proof that news hacking was not the preserve of a single 'rogue reporter'.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/phone-hacking/8656580/Phone-hacking-Police-chief-Andy-Hayman-paid-for-champagne-dinners-with-News-of-the-World-journalists.html

Does anyone remember reading the result of the enquiry into the death of Mike Todd, Chief Constable of Manchester ?
It was rumoured within the police ciurcles that credit card "problems" were on the agenda.
I don't think the public have been given all the information.
Yet.