Decision Due Over Phone Hacking Charges

Prosecutors are to announce later whether they will bring charges in relation to alleged phone hacking by journalists.

Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) legal adviser Alison Levitt QC is expected to reveal at around 11am whether anyone arrested so far under Operation Weeting will face prosecution.

Eleven current and former journalists and one non-journalist detained as part of the investigation are all due to answer police bail.

Among those awaiting the decision is Rebekah Brooks who was arrested last July on suspicion of phone hacking and corruption relating to her time as editor of News Of The World.

The scandal forced her to resign her post as chief executive of the paper's parent company News International.

Andy Coulson was questioned by police for nine hours when he was arrested over phone hacking last year.

He was editor of the News Of The World from 2003 to 2007, after which he became David Cameron's director of communications, only to step down from that post in January 2011.

The private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, who had a contract with the News Of The World, was arrested and bailed in December on suspicion of conspiracy to hack voicemail messages.

The former News Of The World chief reporter Neville Thurlbeck was arrested in April 2011 on suspicion of intercepting voicemails. He was dismissed by News International in September of that year.

Ms Levitt is principal legal adviser to the director of public prosecutions Keir Starmer and is overseeing decisions over potential prosecutions linked to phone hacking.

So far, 24 people including 15 current and former journalists have been arrested under Operation Weeting.

Police have also detained 41 people under Operation Elveden, a probe into alleged corrupt payments to public officials, and seven under Operation Tuleta, which is looking at accusations of computer hacking and privacy infringement.

So far, six people including Mrs Brooks and her husband Charlie, have been charged.

Mrs Brooks faces three charges of conspiring to pervert the course of justice, while her husband is charged with one count of the same offence.

The couple are due to enter pleas when they appear at Southwark Crown Court in London on September 26.