Sir Paul Stephenson

The Metropolitan Police Commissioner's decision to retire is the right one. Under any circumstances he was naive when he accepted free accommodation at a health spa of which his friend was the big cheese. Apparently the stay at the health spa to help him recover from an operation on his leg would have cost the ordinary punter £12,000. Although Sir Paul was unaware of it at the time it is unfortunate that the PR consultant to the health spa was a former senior executive of News International. This is the same individual, Neil Wallis, who was a consultant until last September to the Met and who was arrested in relation to the News International scandal last Thursday. Without the free health spa stay and its connection to Mr Wallis Sir Paul could probably have survived the arrest of the latter since he had thought, when the original police investigation into hacking by the News of the World had concluded, that all the hacking criminality had been rooted out and dealt with. He was wrong but his reaction to the re-opening of enquiries was spot on. Andy Coulson has always denied he knew anything about hacking as I know from an ex-colleague of his. If he had been asked I'm sure Coulson would have given the same answer to Cameron who would quite reasonably have accepted what he was told. With hindsight it is possible to say that employing Coulson was a risk but without hindsight it is not so evident. In any event it is not a resigning issue and the mosquito attack of Yvette Cooper should be easily swatted away.