Portrait of the week | 23 July 2011

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David Cameron, the Prime Minister, cut short a trade mission to South Africa, returning to give a statement on the phone hacking scandal to the Commons, which delayed its summer recess. Rupert Murdoch, the chief executive of News Corporation, appeared before a select committee of the Commons investigating the scandal, with his son James, the chief of News Corporation Europe and Asia. ‘I was absolutely shocked, appalled and ashamed when I heard about the Milly Dowler case two weeks ago,’ Mr Murdoch Senior told the committee, but the responsibility for what went on at the News of the World was that of ‘the people I trusted to run it and maybe the people they trusted’. Wendi Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch’s wife, exhibited admirably rapid reactions in leaping at a demonstrator who attempted to push a plate of foam into his face during the hearing. Rebekah Brooks, who had resigned as chief executive of News International on 15 July, appeared separately. She had been arrested on 17 July and released on bail after a few hours. Sean Hoare, a former News of the World journalist who had told the New York Times last year that phone hacking was widespread at the paper, was found dead at home.

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Sir Paul Stephenson resigned as Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police ‘as a consequence of the ongoing speculation and accusations relating to the Met’s links with News International at a senior level and in particular in relation to Mr Neil Wallis,’ he said. Mr Wallis had been arrested three days earlier, and had acted as a media consultant to the Met from 2009 to 2010. In his resignation statement, Sir Paul made a reference to Andy Coulson, David Cameron’s former director of communications, who resigned in January: ‘Unlike Mr Coulson,’ Sir Paul said, ‘Mr Wallis had not resigned from News of the World.’