News of the World hired investigators to spy on hacking victims' lawyers

The Guardian
Nick Davies

Exclusive: Investigators followed and filmed lawyers of hacking victims in apparent attempt to gather material on private lives

Mark Lewis, who has represented victims of phone hacking
including the family of the murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler,
was one of the lawyers targeted.

The News of the World hired a specialist private investigator to run covert surveillance on two of the lawyers representing phone-hacking victims as part of an operation to put pressure on them to stop their work.

The investigator secretly videoed Mark Lewis and Charlotte Harris as well as family members and associates. Evidence suggests it was part of an attempt to gather evidence for false smears about their private lives.

The News of the World also took specialist advice in an attempt to injunct Lewis to prevent him representing the victims of hacking and tried to persuade one of his former clients to sue him.
The surveillance of Lewis and Harris occurred during the past 18 months, when Rupert Murdoch's son James was executive chairman of the paper's parent company, News International. He is due to give a second round of evidence to a House of Commons select committee on Thursday, and is likely to face intense questioning about the quality of his leadership.

Neither lawyer would comment but friends say they are furious at what they see as an attempt at "blackmail" and are considering suing the News of the World for breach of privacy. They have previously had to reassure clients that their private lives would not be exposed if they dared to sue the paper.

A News International spokesperson said : "News International's enquiries have led the company to believe that Mark Lewis and Charlotte Harris were subject to surveillance. While surveillance is not illegal, it was clearly deeply inappropriate in these circumstances. This action was not condoned by any current executive at the company."

Lewis and Harris have been part of a small group of lawyers who have mounted a series of devastating legal actions against News International. Separately, they represented Gordon Taylor and Max Clifford, the first two victims to sue the company for hacking their phones.

Harris also acts for football agent Sky Andrew, whose case led in January to the resignation of the prime minister's media adviser, Andy Coulson. Lewis also represents the family of the murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler, whose case led to the closure of the News of the World in July.

Emerging evidence suggests the lawyers were targeted on at least two occasions by Derek Webb, an investigator who specialises in physically following people and in making secret videos of their movements. Webb has worked for the News of the World since 2003, following hundreds of targets including members of the royal family and serving cabinet ministers. Emails recovered by Scotland Yard disclose the names of those working for News International who hatched the plans.

Webb was given the job as part of an attempt to prove a false claim that Harris was having an affair with a Manchester solicitor and other false claims about the private life of Harris and her children. It is not yet clear exactly how the News of the World would have used the information if any claim had proved to be true.

In spring 2010, following a hostile report by the Commons media select committee, the News of the World hired Webb to gather evidence on Lewis. For reasons that are not yet clear, he focused on Lewis's former wife and secretly filmed her home in Manchester, following her and taking further video of her and her daughter as they visited local shops and a garden centre.

'Arrogant powers on verge of collapse'

Press TV

A senior Iranian lawmaker says the awareness of the British people of lies and claims made by British officials will gradually lead to the collapse of arrogance. 

Deputy Chairman of Iran's Majlis (parliament) Committee on
National Security and Foreign Policy
Mohammad Esmail Kowsari

Global arrogance, the US, Zionists and the overall system of dominance claim to support democracy but in fact they are pursuing the opposite in their countries and in the Third World for their own interests, Deputy Chairman of Iran's Majlis (parliament) Committee on National Security and Foreign Policy Mohammad Esmail Kowsari said on Tuesday.

He stated that the British government killed Sean Hoare, former News of the World journalist who made phone hacking allegations against the paper, immediately after the disclosure of the scandal in Britain.

“This shows that all human rights claims made by the US, Britain and international Zionism are false and unfounded,” the Iranian legislator said, Mehr news agency reported.

They have always claimed that Muslim countries have not observed democracy and human rights, Kowsari noted, adding, “The fact is that they are not committed even to rules and regulations they, themselves, introduce.”

Sean Hoare was found dead at his home in Watford, north of London on July 18.

Hoare said in interviews last year with The New York Times and the state-run BBC that phone hacking was widely used and even encouraged at the News of the World and former editor Andy Coulson knew about voicemail hacking and had asked him to snoop on phone messages.

The scandal over hacking the phones of ordinary citizens has rocked the entire British establishment with senior politicians admitting that 'the pillars of the establishment are tumbling.' 

After Oslo: Time to Crack Down On Mossad Terrorism

Strategic Culture Foundation
Wayne Madsen

Israel’s most secret and tried-and-true weapon is the “false flag” terrorist attack.

State-sponsored terrorism is defined by Encyclopedia Britannica as the “systematic use of violence to create a general climate of fear in a population and thereby to bring about a particular political objective [and] is employed by governments -- or more often by factions within governments -- against that government's citizens, against factions within the government, or against foreign governments or groups.”

On July 22, a bomb, said to be an Oklahoma City-type explosive device, crafted with fertilizer and diesel fuel, blew up in downtown Oslo, Norway, in the heart of the government district. Shortly thereafter, a man dressed in a Norwegian police uniform opened fire on a Labor Party youth camp on the island of Utoya in Tyri fjord. Access to the island was by boat only.  Over 100 people were killed in the twin terror attacks.

Almost immediately, the world’s corporate media began pushing the story that those who were responsible for the blast and mass shooting were associated with “Al Qaeda” and other radical Islamist groups. CNN’s Washington, DC chief anchor Wolf Blitzer, a former spokesman for the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) lobby and a correspondent for the Jerusalem Post, began his late afternoon program by pointing to “Al Qaeda” and radical Islamists as the chief culprits for the terrorist attacks in Norway.

CNN paraded out a number “experts,” in actuality, propagandists for the Israeli agenda linked to neo-conservative outlets and the Pentagon’s “terrorism industrial complex,” before the cameras to advance the radical Islamist meme even as Norwegian authorities pinned blame on the attack on at least one perpetrator, a Norwegian named Anders Behring Breivik. CNN constantly showed footage of frightened people in downtown Oslo running for their lives from the site of the blast, as well as still photograph of a pall of light-brown smoke over downtown Oslo. Of course, CNN’s intention was to evoke memories of the 9/11 attack in Manhattan.

Breivik, who sometimes anglicized his name as Andrew Berwick in his numerous web postings, was said to be a right-wing Islamophobe who sympathized with Zionism and who was a Freemason… Breivik was also reported to be a fundamentalist Christian but he adopted a stance against the Lutheran Church, the state church of Norway, and argued for a “collective” counter-reformation to return the Protestant churches to the control of the Vatican and the Pope. Breivik lambasted the Lutheran Church and other mainstream Protestant churches, condemning “Priests in jeans who march for Palestine.”

More incredibly, the London tabloid of Rupert Murdoch’s scandal-plagued News International, The Sun, went to press with the following false headline: “Norway’s 911: ‘Al Qaeda’ Massacre.” On March 29, 2011, Harvard Law School’s extremist Zionist Professor Alan Dershowitz penned a piece in the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal, a newspaper that actively discriminates against the hiring of non-Jews as reporters and editors in violation of U.S. civil rights and equal opportunity employment laws, in which he called Norway anti-Semitic. Dershowitz cited as an example former Norwegian Prime Minister Kare Willock’s criticism of President Barack Obama’s choice of Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff because he is Jewish. In fact, Emanuel’s pro- Israeli sympathies as a former member of the Israel Defense Force are what prompted many political observers in Washington and elsewhere to question his primary loyalty to the United States.

A network of Israeli bloggers pushed a claim of responsibility on a previously-unknown group called Ansar al-Jihad al-Alami (the Helpers of the Global Jihad). The group’s claims were picked up and run by several corporate media outlets and then pulled when it was discovered the claim was a hoax. Mossad has a program to distribute bogus claims of responsibility for Islamist terrorist attacks via “Jihadist” websites that are actually operated by the Mossad and a network of “hasbaratchiks,” Israeli and foreign Jews who act as propagandists on the web. These hasbara (propaganda) agents and volunteers operate through such programs as Megaphone and GIYUS (“Give Israel Your United Support.”) After the attempt to blame the Norway attacks on Islamists failed, the “hasbaratchiks” shifted to “sock puppet” troll mode, posting comments on blogs that criticized allegations that Mossad and Zionists were behind the Norway attacks, emphasizing that such beliefs were “anti-Semitic” and wild “conspiracy theories.” Some Israeli “sock puppets” even offered lunatic suggestions that Breivik was planted by Islamists to make Israel and Zionists look bad.

When the “Islamist” connection to the holocaust in Norway was shown to be non-existent after Norwegian security and police agencies began looking at the evidence, the corporate media switched its propaganda line from “radical Islam” being responsible to “far –right extremism” opposed to multiculturalism and immigration in Europe as the culprit. Even outlets that in the past had been known for their independence from the corporate media line, including Al Jazeera and RT [formerly known as Russia Today], echoed the line that Breivik primarily represented right-wing opposition to Muslim immigrants in Europe. Al Jazeera repeated the line that Breivik was a “lone madman,” the insinuation being that he was not linked to any wider network. While Breivik certainly was associated with the far-right xenophobic elements in Norway, Europe, and North America, there was no mention by the corporate media of his admiration for such American Zionist Islamophobes as Richard Pipes and Pam Geller. Geller led the bigoted anti-Muslim campaign against an Islamic Center near the site of “Ground Zero,” the former World Trade Center site, in lower Manhattan. Breivik posted a number of his anti-Muslim and pro-Zionist screeds on the Norwegian website www.document.no, which is operated by Hans-Kristian Rustad, a Norwegian pro-Israeli journalist.

No corporate media outlets reported that the brand of far-right extremism of Breivik is closely associated with Zionist-supported far-right anti-immigrant political parties and movements in Western Europe, including the mis-named Progress Party of Norway, the Dutch Freedom Party of Islamophobe Geert Wilders, the Sweden Democrats, Finland’s True Finns Party, the Danish People’s Party, the English Defense League, the Pro-Germany Citizen’s Movement, and a pan-Nordic fascist terrorist group called “Nordiske.” Breivik also expressed support for the Tea Party in the United States…

 The European anti-Muslim xenophobic network is linked to the notorious publication of Prophet Muhammad cartoons by the neo-conservative Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten and Norway’s Dagbladet. The Euro-xenophobes are supported by the longtime Zionist Bernard-Henri Levy, the French philosopher who is a friend of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, and disgraced former International Monetary Fund managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn. It is noteworthy that Levy is one of the major backers of the Libyan rebels fighting Muammar Qaddafi. Norway announced it was pulling its aircraft from the NATO campaign in Libya at the end of July. Norway also announced its support for Palestine’s sovereignty resolution in the UN General Assembly in September.

As more and more evidence pointed to Oslo being yet another example of a state-sponsored terrorist attack by Israel’s Mossad, the corporate media studiously avoided mentioning how the Norwegian government through its recent actions, had become a major problem for Israel and its allies abroad, especially on the Palestine sovereignty issue… In addition, Norwegian police and intelligence are painfully aware of Mossad’s past operations in Norway, including the infamous Lillehammer Affair in 1973. On July 21, 1973, Mossad agents assassinated Ali Hassan Salameh, a Moroccan waiter in Lillehammer, wrongly believing he was the operations chief for the Palestinian terrorist group “Black September.” Norwegian police arrested the Mossad agents who killed Salameh and uncovered an intricate network of Mossad safe houses, phone numbers, and Norwegian sleeper agents for Mossad.

Just as was the case with the coordinated bombings of Madrid trains on March 22, 2004 and London buses and trains on July 7, 2005, viewed by European security services as being the work of not “Al Qaeda” but domestic “radicals,” there was no link to Islamist radicals with the attacks in Norway. However, there was every indication that the attack on Norway was intended to shake up the Norwegian population and damage the reputation of the left-of-center Norwegian government of Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg.

The corporate media insisted that Breivik was solely responsible for Norway’s worst violent attack since World War II. Norwegian police reports that a second gunman, described as having “thick dark hair and a non-Nordic appearance,” were suppressed in much of the corporate media. The time line of the Oslo attack causes anyone’s imagination to be stretched on being sold a “lone gunman/bomber” theory.

Anonymous releases restricted NATO document

ComputerWorld

But the hacker collective said it won't release emails allegedly hacked from The Sun tabloid just yet

The hacking collective Anonymous released a document on Thursday marked "restricted" from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

The 36-page document, which is dated Aug. 27, 2007, appears to be budget and equipment outlays for what was termed a new "HQ ISAF JOINT CIS CONTROL CENTRE." NATO's press office could not be immediately reached.

Anonymous claimed on its "AnonymousIRC" Twitter handle that it has 1GB of material from NATO but said that most would not be published because it would be "irresponsible." 

[ With the increasing threat of cyber crimes, protect yourself and stay informed on the latest news with Computerworld's Security newsletter ] 

In another Tweet, Anonymous said that the data was harvested via "simple injection," which usually refers to inputting malformed data in Web-based forms and seeing if the back-end database responds with information.

The group prefaced its release of the NATO document with an earlier comment on Twitter about its alleged trove of e-mail from the British tabloid The Sun, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. media group that is under investigation for voicemail interception and paying police officers for information.

"We think actually we may not release emails from The Sun, simply because it may compromise the court case," according to a Twitter post from Anonymous.

LulzSec, known as LulzSecurity, claimed credit on Twitter on Monday for that attack, but the two groups are somewhat aligned. Although LulzSec said it was going dormant after a string of highly successful attacks against the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, PBS.org and Fox.com, among others, it appears to be back in action. LulzSec hit The Sun's website on Monday, posting a fake news story that Murdoch had died.

The two groups also posted a statement on Pastebin directed at Steven Chabinsky, a deputy assistant director in the U.S Federal Bureau of Investigation's cyberdivision.

 "Your threats to arrest us are meaningless to us as you cannot arrest an idea," the statement said. "Any attempt to do so will make your citizens more angry until they will roar in one gigantic choir."

Still, law enforcement isn't doing too bad. The FBI said on Wednesday it had arrested 14 people suspected of conducting distributed denial-of-service attacks against PayPal in December 2010. PayPal, along with Visa, MasterCard, Western Union and Bank of America, came under attack by Anonymous following their severing of payment links that funneled donations to the whistle-blowing site WikiLeaks.

Robert Fisk on why he left Murdoch’s Times (blind Zionism is the crime)

Anthony Loewenstein

The veteran reporter rightly couldn’t tolerate an owner who put his love for Israel above the truth (which is something we still see in Murdoch titles across the world):

Oddly, he [Murdoch] never appeared the ogre of evil, darkness and poison that he’s been made out to be these past few days. Maybe it’s because his editors and sub-editors and reporters repeatedly second-guessed what Murdoch would say. Murdoch was owner of The Times when I covered the blood-soaked Israeli invasion and occupation of Lebanon in 1982. Not a line was removed from my reports, however critical they were of Israel. After the invasion, Douglas-Home and Murdoch were invited by the Israelis to take a military helicopter trip into Lebanon. The Israelis tried to rubbish my reporting; Douglas-Home said he stood up for me. On the flight back to London, Douglas-Home and Murdoch sat together. “I knew Rupert was interested in what I was writing,” he told me later. “He sort of waited for me to tell him what it was, although he didn’t demand it. I didn’t show it to him.”

But things changed. Before he was editor, Douglas-Home would write for the Arabic-language Al-Majella magazine, often deeply critical of Israel. Now his Times editorials took an optimistic view of the Israeli invasion. He stated that “there is now no worthy Palestinian to whom the world can talk” and – for heaven’s sake – that “perhaps at last the Palestinians on the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip will stop hoping that stage-strutters like Mr Arafat can rescue them miraculously from doing business with the Israelis.”

All of which, of course, was official Israeli government policy at the time.

Then, in the spring of 1983, another change. I had, with Douglas-Home’s full agreement, spent months investigating the death of seven Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners of the Israelis in Sidon. It was obvious, I concluded, that the men had been murdered – the grave-digger even told me that their corpses had been brought to him, hands tied behind their backs, showing marks of bruising. But now Douglas-Home couldn’t see how we would be “justified” in running a report “so long after the event”.

In other words, the very system of investigative journalism – of fact-checking and months of interviews – became self-defeating. When we got the facts, too much time had passed to print them. I asked the Israelis if they would carry out a military inquiry and, anxious to show how humanitarian they were, they duly told us there would be an official investigation. The Israeli “inquiry” was, I suspected, a fiction. But it was enough to “justify” publishing my long and detailed report. Once the Israelis could look like good guys, Douglas-Home’s concerns evaporated.
…
These past two weeks, I have been thinking of what it was like to work for Murdoch, what was wrong about it, about the use of power by proxy. For Murdoch could never be blamed. Murdoch was more caliph than ever, no more responsible for an editorial or a “news” story than a president of Syria is for a massacre – the latter would be carried out on the orders of governors who could always be tried or sacked or sent off as adviser to a prime minister – and the leader would invariably anoint his son as his successor. Think of Hafez and Bashar Assad or Hosni and Gamal Mubarak or Rupert and James. In the Middle East, Arab journalists knew what their masters wanted, and helped to create a journalistic desert without the water of freedom, an utterly skewed version of reality. So, too, within the Murdoch empire.

Ruppert Murdoch Found Suppressing Polls Reflecting Outcomes He Doesn't Favor

The Independent

The Sun newspaper failed to publish a YouGov poll showing that voters fear a Liberal Democrat government less than a Conservative or Labour one.

The Liberal Democrats accused the newspaper, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch, of suppressing the finding. The paper, which endorsed Labour in the past three elections, declared its support for David Cameron during the Labour Party's annual conference last October. Like other Tory-supporting papers, it has turned its fire on Nick Clegg over his policies, pro-European statements and expenses claims since he won last week's first televised leaders' debate.

YouGov also found that if people thought Mr Clegg's party had a significant chance of winning the election, it would win 49 per cent of the votes, with the Tories winning 25 per cent and Labour just 19 per cent. One in four people Labour and one in six Tory supporters say they would switch to the Liberal Democrats in these circumstances. The party would be ahead among both men and women, in every age and social group, and in every region. On a uniform swing across Britain, that would give the Liberal Democrats 548 MPs, Labour 41 and the Tories 25.

The Liberal Democrats hope the long-standing argument that supporting them would be a "wasted vote" is breaking down following the surge in support for them in the past week. However, even the most optimistic Liberal Democrats do not expect to win the election.

The party has taken comfort from YouGov's unpublished finding that more voters would be delighted by the formation of a Liberal Democrat government (29 per cent), than by a Tory government (25 per cent) or a Labour one (18 per cent).

Only 21 per cent would be dismayed if a Liberal Democrat administration were formed, compared to 45 per cent for the Tories and 51 per cent for Labour. A Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition, which would delight 14 per cent of people, would be a more popular outcome than a Conservative-Liberal Democrat one (9 per cent).

The Liberal Democrats are angry that The Sun did not publish these figures. Lord Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay, the party's Treasury spokesman, said: "The numbers show that half the country cannot stand Gordon Brown and that the other half can't stand David Cameron. I wonder why The Sun wouldn't share this news with its readers.

"We always knew...that when people believe the Liberal Democrats can win, there is a big jump in our support. In 90 minutes in the first debate, Nick Clegg tore open the two-party straitjacket which has stifled British politics for the last 80 years. Now, at last, people can vote for what they want, not against what they fear."

The Sun declined to comment last night. On the day the poll's findings were published on Tuesday, it focused on the Tories moving into the lead in the share of the vote and said there were signs that the Liberal Democrats' surprise surge was on the wane. An editorial comment said: "Mr Clegg is the political equivalent of a holiday romance. An exciting fortnight's flirtation so long as you don't ask too many questions. We cannot gamble the nation's future like that."

However, Sun journalists said YouGov's extensive daily poll always contained too many findings to publish. On Monday, the paper ran a front-page story saying the Liberal Democrats had taken the lead, based on the previous day's survey.

Peter Kellner, the YouGov president, said in a commentary on the unpublished poll that it was no longer outlandish to ask whether Mr Clegg could end up as prime minister. "The answer is probably no – I'd put the odds at 10-1 against – but longer-odds horses have won big races in the past," he said.

Mr Kellner added: "Not only is a Lib Dem government the most popular option; it is the one that frightens voters far less than any other option. If the Lib Dem bandwagon is to be halted and sent into reverse, Labour and the Tories must do far more to persuade voters that a vote for the Lib Dems would be seriously bad for Britain."

Another poll published yesterday suggested that the Liberal Democrats' advance has proved more damaging to the Tories than to Labour.

According to the Ipsos MORI poll for Reuters, the Tories have achieved a 5 per cent swing from Labour since the last general election, in 2005, in Labour-held marginal constituencies. That suggests Britain is still heading for a hung parliament, with the Tories as the largest party.

The poll, conducted between 16 and 19 April, showed support for Labour fell to 36 percent compared with 41 per cent two weeks ago, while Tory support dropped to 32 percent from 38 per cent. Liberal Democrat support jumped to 23 per cent from 11 per cent.

The swing to the third party comes mainly from voters who were previously not sure they would vote.

The truth about those smears against Clegg

Claim: Liberal Democrat donors paid up to £250 a month into Nick Clegg's personal bank account (The Daily Telegraph, yesterday).

Truth: Despite the front page headline Mr Clegg did not break any parliamentary rules, and the cash – which the party said helped pay for a researcher in Mr Clegg's office – was declared in the Commons register of members' interests. The Daily Telegraph says he made separate claims under his office allowances budget to cover staffing. The Liberal Democrats say the story is "wrong in fact" and have produced paperwork to back up their assertion.

Claim: Clegg lobbied for "lax" EU bank laws (The Daily Telegraph, yesterday).

Truth: Before becoming an MP, Mr Clegg had a brief spell as a lobbyist for GPlus. Its clients included the Royal Bank of Scotland, which was attempting to amend EU directives. Mr Clegg did work on the RBS account, but did not lobby "externally" on its behalf. GPlus said last night that Mr Clegg worked for it two days a week for about eight and a half months.

Claim: Clegg made a "Nazi slur on Britain" and said the British have a "more insidious cross to bear" than Germans over the Second World War (Daily Mail, yesterday).

Truth: The comments were made in a newspaper article by Mr Clegg in 2002 when he was a Euro MP. Written after two Germans working in a call centre in Swindon went to an industrial tribunal to protest about the abuse they suffered, it argued the British still laboured from "anti-German mania". He concluded: "All nations have a cross to bear, and none more so than Germany with its memories of Nazism. But the British cross is more insidious still. A misplaced sense of superiority, sustained by delusions of grandeur and a tenacious obsession with the last war, is much harder to shake off."

Claim: "Clegg refused to return a £2.4m donation to the party from convicted fraudster Michael Brown" (The Sun, Tuesday).

Truth: Brown's donations in 2004 – the biggest in the party's history – have hung over the Liberal Democrats for years. First, there were questions whether Brown's company, 5th Avenue Partners, was a genuine UK business. Then in 2008 Brown was charged with fraud and money-laundering and fled bail. He was convicted in his absence and sentenced to seven years in jail. Despite the conviction, the Electoral Commission has concluded the donations were permissible because the firm "was carrying on business in the UK" at the time and the Liberal Democrats had no need to return the money.

Claim: The Liberal Democrats have "flip-flopped shamelessly" on Afghanistan (The Sun, yesterday).

Truth: This is based on a party conference motion last year which said ministers should focus on "concluding the Afghanistan mission" and called on the UK to end the "military first" approach to the country. However, motions passed at party conferences are not binding and the party's foreign affairs spokesman, Ed Davey, told delegates the party supported the war. Its manifesto stops short of setting a timetable for withdrawal and says the Liberal Democrats will be "critical supporters of the Afghanistan mission".

Claim: Britain's security would be risked by Liberal Democrat policy to scrap our Trident nuclear defence (The Sun, yesterday).

Truth: The Liberal Democrats' manifesto does say they would "rule out the like-for-like replacement of the Trident nuclear weapons system" to save £100m. However, they also say they are multilateralist, not unilateralist. Former leader Sir Menzies Campbell favours replacing Trident with cheaper, nuclear-tipped cruise missiles which could be stationed on smaller Astute-class subs. This would mean Britain would remain a nuclear power with a seat at the UN Security Council.

Claim: Liberal Democrats' "crazy" immigration policy would give jobs to asylum seekers (Daily Express, yesterday).

Truth: The Liberal Democrats propose an amnesty for failed asylum seekers and illegal immigrants who have been here for 10 years and not committed any crimes. This is controversial because of fears it could encourage illegal immigrants to try their luck in Britain in the hope of triggering a further amnesty in the future. The Liberal Democrats would also introduce a regional points-based system to allow migrants to work only where they are needed. It would be backed up by "rigorous checks on businesses and a crackdown on rogue employers who profit from illegal labour".

Claim: The Liberal Democrats would free 60,000 convicts (Daily Mail, Wednesday).

Truth: The Liberal Democrat manifesto does promise to "introduce a presumption against short-term sentences of less than six months – replaced by rigorously enforced community sentences which evidence shows are better at cutting reoffending". The Daily Mail claimed that in 2008 "no fewer than 58,076 people were sentenced to a prison term of six months or less". The Ministry of Justice said the real figure was 55,333. The Liberal Democrat policy would spare offenders from going into prison; it would not "free" prisoners.

Claim: Clegg is posh (The Sun yesterday).

Truth: His half-Russian banker father sent him to one of Britain's smartest prep schools, Caldicott; he went on to Westminster School and Cambridge. A friend is quoted as saying: "His father was an incredibly wealthy banker with loads of houses – in London, in the Chilterns, a French chateau, a ski chalet in Switzerland... I think." So true – but then so is David Cameron.