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MPs seek fresh inquiry into NoW phone hacking
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? Calls for parliament to order second inquiry into hacking
? Scotland Yard to examine allegations by former NoW reporter
News International and David Cameron\'s PR chief, Andy Coulson, face the prospect of a fresh parliamentary inquiry into phone-hacking by the News of the World after Labour MPs said they plan to press for the issue to be referred to the powerful standards and privileges committee of the House of Commons.
MPs who believe they have been the victims of hacking said they were considering asking the Speaker, John Bercow, to order the investigation on the grounds that there has been a breach of parliamentary privilege.
The move came as Scotland Yard said it would examine allegations made by a former News of the World reporter that hacking was widespread at the tabloid and that then-editor Coulson knew about the practice.
In a statement tonight Assistant Commissioner John Yates said the Metropolitan police had not been aware of the allegations made by Sean Hoare before they were published in a New York Times investigation last week. He said detectives were seeking further information from the paper and would consult the Crown Prosecution Service on whether to take further action.
The latest developments came on a weekend when:
? Lord Mandelson, the former business secretary, was named as the latest possible target of News of the World phone message hacking. He said today he was not the source of the story and did not wish to comment.
? Pressure mounted on the Met over its failure to fully investigate leads in the original hacking inquiry, and to notify potential victims they had been targeted.
? MPs indicated they would press the home secretary, Theresa May, over the apparent inadequacy of the Met\'s investigation of the issue during Home Office questions in the Commons tomorrow, and call on her to make an emergency statement.
At least three other former ministers believe they were the victims of News of the World phone hacking, including Chris Bryant, Lord Prescott and Tessa Jowell. Prescott has been pressing the police for days to give him details of its inquiry into whether his phone was hacked. Today he produced detailed invoices showing that News International consultants were paid to make inquiries into him.
But Yates insisted tonight there was no evidence that Prescott\'s phone had been hacked by Glen Mulcaire, the private detective working for the News of the World, or Clive Goodman, the paper\'s royal correspondent. Both were jailed for hacking the phones of members of the royal household. Yates said the Met could not hand over documents relating to the investigation to Prescott unless it was ordered to do so by a court.
The prospect of a further investigation by the standards and privileges committee emerged after MPs argued that a precedent may have been set by the decision to mount a privileges committee inquiry into the arrest of the Tory MP Damian Green in his Commons office in 2008 over the alleged leaking of documents from the office of the home secretary.
It would be for the Speaker to decide whether to grant an inquiry, but Labour MPs claimed there now appeared to have been a wholesale attempt to break into MPs\' phone messages, and the response of the Met had been shown to be inadequate.
One Labour source said: \"A precedent has been set with the Damian Green affair. This is about the conduct of government, and if it was good enough for the Tories in the case of Green\'s arrest, it should be good enough in this case.\"
Detailed legal advice will be sought this week from parliamentary sources.
A previous culture select committee inquiry concluded that senior figures at News International management suffered from collective amnesia about the details of the hacking. The more powerful privileges committee could demand greater co-operation from witnesses.
Today the Guardian publishes a detailed account of the police investigation into the original hacking claims that shows how detectives sought to limit the scope of the inquiry and failed to alert public figures who had been targeted by Mulcaire.
A note of a case conference between police and the CPS records that detectives recommended that \"the appropriate strategy is to ringfence the case to minimise the risk of extraneous matters being included\".
In a briefing note for ministers produced earlier this year, Dean Haydon, Yates\'s staff officer acknowledged: \"Minimal work was done on the vast personal data where no criminal offences were apparent.\"
The Conservatives continued to argue that the latest spate of allegations of widespread phone hacking, prompted by a New York Times four-month inquiry, did not break new ground or was based on unreliable witnesses.
The specific allegation that No 10 communications director Andy Coulson had known about phone hacking when he was editor of the News of the World were \"recycled\", a senior cabinet minister, Michael Gove, said.
He said the police decided \"there was no case to answer\" over claims public figures had their phones tapped while Coulson was editor.
Coulson resigned at the time saying he would take responsibility even though he had not been aware of the methods that were being used by one of his reporters. His claim of ignorance has been challenged by some former News of the World staff, including some unnamed reporters cited by the New York Times.
Patrick Wintour
Nick Davies

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Basque group Eta to put down guns
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Group releases video saying it will not carry out armed actions three years after resuming violent campaign for independence
The armed Basque separatist group Eta today announced a ceasefire, raising hopes of a new peace process with the Spanish government but giving few clues about how that might happen.
The announcement was made in a video showing three masked Eta militants sitting behind a table with the group\'s axe and snake symbol behind them.
\"Eta announces that it took the decision several months ago not to carry out armed actions,\" one of the militants, a woman, said.
The group has killed more than 800 people in a 50-year campaign for an independent state made up four Spanish provinces and part of south-west France.
The masked figures in the video said Eta wished \"to reach a scenario for a democratic process\", but failed to indicate whether the ceasefire would be temporary or permanent.
The message also made no mention of either giving up arms or an international verification process ? something experts have said would be key to any future peace process.
There was no immediate reaction from Spain\'s socialist government, which was expected to make a public reply.
The Eta announcement comes after six months in which the group has not killed anyone.
The last killing carried out by Eta ? classed as a terrorist organisation by the EU and the US ? was of a French police officer who discovered members stealing cars from a dealership outside Paris in March.
The last fatal attack in Spain saw two police officers killed on the holiday island of Majorca in July 2009.
It is not the first time Eta has unilaterally declared a ceasefire. The last ceasefire, which it described as \"permanent\", was announced in March 2006 and saw prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero\'s government enter into talks with the group.
However, those talks were effectively brought to an end by a bomb that killed two Ecuadorian immigrants at Madrid\'s Barajas airport nine months later.
Zapatero had said, the day before the blast, that he was optimistic about the process.
The bombing was seen as proof that an internal battle between the hawks and doves in Eta had been won by the former.
Police have since arrested many of the group\'s senior leaders, and it is not clear who now runs it. The fact that today\'s communique was read by a woman supports claims that several women are now near the top of Eta\'s command structure.
Spanish government sources have been sceptical about moves by former leaders of Batasuna, a party banned for being an Eta front, to reopen a peace process in recent months.
Some Batasuna leaders now believe the low-level terrorism practised by a much-weakened Eta in recent years is ineffectual and an impediment to progress towards independence.
They have been putting pressure on Eta to lay down arms since a public appeal was made in February.
In a document shown to the Diaro Vasco newspaper over the weekend, senior Batasuna members mapped out a path to peace that included \"a permanent ceasefire with international verification\".
That echoed a call made in March by a group of international peace experts, who advised Eta to follow the new path to peace being signalled by former Batasuna leaders.
The call was made by, amongst others, the Nobel peace prize winners John Hume, Desmond Tutu and FW de Klerk. It also had the backing of the Nelson Mandela Foundation.
But government sources have said the influence of former Batasuna leaders on Eta is weak and the previous ceasefire had shown they had no control over the terrorist group.
The militants on today\'s video accused the Spanish sate, which does not recognise a right to Basque independence, of carrying out a \"fascist offensive\" against the Basque country.
\"The Spanish state is aware that the Basque country is at a crossroads, that the Basque country can now take the road of independence,\" they said.
\"They want to create conditions in which everything is blocked, to avoid political dialogue and drown out the aspirations of the people.\"
Giles Tremlett

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