Prescott aide ‘was targeted in hunt for mistress’

London Evening Standard/London

Private investigator Glenn Mulcaire was also “tasked” to hack the phones of government minister Tessa Jowell and junior royal Lord Frederick Windsor, the jury was told. Mulcaire was part of a NoW investigation unit set up by the now-defunct newspaper’s editor Rebekah Brooks — and his success led to him being rewarded with a contract paying about £100,000 a year, the court was told.

Key e-mails from Mulcaire to NoW news editor Ian Edmondson contained a guide to phone hacking, the court heard. They were sent just four months before Mulcaire and NoW royal editor Clive Goodman were arrested and later jailed for phone hacking.

In one e-mail Mulcaire revealed the mobile phone number of Prescott adviser Joan Hammell and the fact there were 45 messages in her mailbox.

Prosecutor Andrew Edis, QC, stressed that Prescott, who was later ennobled, was not having an affair with her but with somebody else — Tracey Temple.

Edis said: “Mulcaire is telling Edmondson: this is how you hack and you will find 45 messages there. He could have known that if he had hacked them.”

Edis gave details of e-mails showing Brooks’s then-deputy Andy Coulson authorised his news editor to pay Temple £100,000 for her story.

The court heard how records showed that Mulcaire had hacked the phones of both Hammell and Temple.

Tessa Jowell was targeted because her then husband David Mills was suspected of being involved in bribery in Italy. The court also heard a tape made by Mulcaire of him “blagging” passwords and phone details from O2.