Morgan calls on MP to apologise for hacking claims

FORMER tabloid editor Piers Morgan has demanded an apology from an MP, who at the London hearing which quizzed Rupert Murdoch, made claims that Morgan had admitted to phone hacking.

In an angry on-air exchange, Morgan, now a celebrity interviewer for US news network CNN, challenged Member of Parliament Louise Mensch to repeat her claim that he had “boasted” of phone hacking in a book about his tabloid editing days.

She declined to do so, saying she had been covered by parliamentary privilege — which protects her from legal action for anything said inside parliament — a protection that does not apply if she repeats the words elsewhere.

In the committee hearing which grilled Murdoch and his son James over the phone-hacking scandal rocking the tycoon’s media empire, Mensch said Morgan had boasted about using a phone hacking “little trick” to win a scoop of the year award.

“That is a former editor of the Daily Mirror being very open about his personal use of phone hacking,” she said at the hearing.

But Morgan, a former editor of the Mirror and of Murdoch’s defunct News of the World, said he had never claimed to have used phone hacking himself in his 2005 book “The Insider: The Private Diaries of a Scandalous Decade”.

“I’m amused by her cowardice in refusing to repeat that allegation now that shes not in parliament covered by privilege,” Morgan said in the on-air exchange with Mensch, who was in London. “She came out with an absolute blatant lie during those proceedings. At no stage in my book or indeed outside of my book have I ever boasted of using phone hacking for any stories.

“For the record, in my time at the Mirror and the News of the World I have never hacked a phone, told anybody to hack a phone or published any story based on the hacking of a phone.”

In a tetchy exchange, during which Mensch accused Morgan of threatening her, the former newspaperman added: “I think you should apologise for being a liar.”

He repeatedly bashed her for invoking parliamentary privilege and said Mensch should “show some balls” and repeat her claims outside the hearing.

Asking her to produce evidence to back her claim, he said: “If there is no evidence for that, are you going to publicly apologise to me, and to CNN right now for such an outrageous lie?”

“I feel no need whatsoever to apologise,” she said.