Charles Clarke: My fury at Sun claims of affair with adviser

 
14 November 2013
WEST END FINAL

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Former Home Secretary Charles Clarke told the Old Bailey today of his anger at being confronted by The Sun with claims he was having an affair with his special adviser.

He said a reporter claimed to have evidence of an affair with Hannah Pawlby but the MP told him it was untrue and threatened to sue for libel.

Mr Clarke placed the meeting with political editor Trevor Kavanagh between October 2005 and March 2006.

“He said he wanted to see me urgently,” said the ex-minister. “I agreed and we met in my office in the Commons behind the Speaker’s chair.

“He told me he had evidence to show that Hannah and I were having an affair. He said he’d try to get it sympathetically covered in The Sun if I confessed it to him and gave him the story.

“I said such a relationship never existed and so there was no basis on which we could continue to talk.”

Ms Pawlby spoke of how another Sun journalist told her about photographs of her with Mr Clarke. “She said we were having an affair, they were to run the story and what would I say about it?” she told the court. “There was no truth in it and I went to Charles.”

Mr Clarke phoned the Sun editor’s office and although Rebekah Wade (later Brooks) was on holiday he threatened to sue. No report appeared in The Sun or the News of the World.

The jury has heard that private investigator Glenn Mulcaire hacked Ms Pawlby’s mobile phone in June 2005.

Recordings of voicemails left on her phone — including two by then-NoW editor Andy Coulson — which had been found at Mulcaire’s home were played to the court. On them Coulson asks Ms Pawlby to contact Mr Clarke so he could speak to him about a “quite serious story” the paper planned to run.

Coulson’s lawyer said there were other news stories Mr Clarke could have been asked to comment on.

Brooks, Coulson and six others all deny a range of offences that include conspiracy and perverting the course of justice. The case continues.

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