John Yates to sue the Evening Standard

The mainstream media's blogs about the phone hacking scandal are reporting that former Assistant Commissioner John Yates is to sue the Evening Standard.

See, for example, the following in the Guardian, Phone-hacking scandal: live coverage:

3.09pm: Paul Owen writes: Former assistant commissioner John Yates is suing the London Evening Standard for libel "over aspects of its reporting of his conduct in the News of the World phone-hacking investigation", his solicitors, Carter-Ruck, have just announced.

The solicitors say the claim relates to allegations made in articles published on 7 July 2011.

Luke Staiano of Carter-Ruck, Yates's solicitor, said:

The Evening Standard published highly defamatory allegations concerning Assistant Commissioner Yates which go to the heart of his integrity as a police officer. The allegations are completely false and without foundation. The newspaper made no effort to contact Mr Yates to verify the accuracy of the allegations and even wrongly claimed in the article that Mr Yates had not responded to calls. The Evening Standard has refused to apologise or withdraw the allegations, leaving Mr Yates with no alternative but to bring legal proceedings.

I find this development to be a very interesting one.

The Metropolitan Police are advertising for a new commissioner

See Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis.

I wonder if Sara Thornton will apply. See The Death of David Kelly - The future of Chief Constable Sara Thornton .

Phone hacking: John Yates and the July 2009 Guardian articles

In recent days the actions (or failures to act) of the then Assistant Commissioner John Yates in response to July 2009 articles in the Guardian has come under some scrutiny.

On 9th July 2009 the Metropolitan Police Service issued a statement by John Yates. See Statement from AC John Yates.

On 8th and 9th July 2009 the Guardian had published information about the seeming inadequacy of the Metropolitan Police investigation into that and related matters. (The electronic copy appears to have been published late on 8th July 2009 with the hard copy published on 9th July 2009, so far as I can ascertain.)

See, for example, Trail of hacking and deceit under nose of Tory PR chief and Murdoch papers paid £1m to gag phone-hacking victims.

John Yates has accepted that his decision on 9th July 2009 was "very poor" and the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee agreed. See paragraph 15 on page 59 of the report from that committee entitled "Unauthorised tapping into or hacking of mobile communications".

I am currently unable to identify any exploration by the Home Affairs Select Committee about the information in the Guardian about the seemingly illegal actions of Steve Whittamore.

Did John Yates look into that aspect of the Guardian information at all?

Cressida Dick replaces John Yates

Graeme Archer has an interesting piece on Telegraph blogs about Cressida Dick replacing John Yates as Assistant Commissioner in charge of SO15 (Counter-terrrorism).

See Cressida Dick's appointment: more proof that the Met is an utterly shameless police force .