Yates gets full backing from Theresa May: 'He's doing very good job'

Home Secretary Theresa May today gave her full backing to Met assistant commissioner John Yates as calls for his resignation over the phone-hacking scandal mounted.

Mrs May said Mr Yates, who is Britain's top counter-terrorism officer, was doing a "very good job" and that she had confidence in him - despite his admission that he had failed victims of phone hacking.

Her support came as former deputy prime minister John Prescott and other Labour MPs called for Mr Yates to be removed over his decision not to re-investigate the hacking allegations. There were also claims he had misled Parliament over the number of victims and other key inquiry details.

Mr Yates decided not to pursue a probe into phone hacking in 2009 after a one-day review of evidence. It has since emerged that murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler's phone was hacked, giving her parents false hope that she was alive. He has issued three apologies and admitted the decision not to investigate further was "pretty crap". Today Mr Yates and other senior Met officers responsible for the phone-hacking probe were giving evidence to the Commons home affairs select committee.

Speaking at a London news conference, Mrs May said: "John Yates is in charge of counter-terrorism. He is doing a very good job and I have confidence in John Yates."

She also expressed concern at the disclosure that corrupt officers in the Met's royal and diplomatic protection squad had passed information to the News of the World for cash. She said: "As Sir Paul Stephenson has said, I wish to make clear that any officer who is involved in corrupt or illegal activity of any sort should be identified and dealt with according to the law." Labour MPs Chris Bryant and Tom Watson have call for Mr Yates to resign.

Speaking in the Commons yesterday, Mr Bryant claimed that Mr Yates had "repeatedly lied to Parliament" by wrongly telling MPs that all hacking victims had been contacted, that very few people had been targeted and by saying that mobile phone firms had been "put on notice" about the problem.

Mr Bryant added: "He is in charge of counter-terrorism in this country for heaven's sake. Surely he should resign." Mr Watson also claimed that the officer's position was "untenable".

"Far from this scandal being about wrong-doing at the News of the World, it is a story of institutional criminality at News International," he said. David Cameron's former press secretary George Eustice, who is now a Tory MP, later told BBC's Newsnight that he did not have confidence in Mr Yates.

In a letter to the select committee ahead of today's hearing, Mr Yates said he had only sought to test if new evidence, supplied by the Guardian newspaper in 2009, justified reopening the probe and had decided against after being advised by another senior officer there was nothing to add to what had already been investigated.

Mr Yates said this assessment had been backed by the Director of Public Prosecutions and that it was only after News International supplied new evidence this year that it became clear that further charges might be possible. He added that he had been unaware that Milly Dowler's phone had been hacked until the media revelations last week.

The New York Times claimed today five senior police officers, including former commissioner Sir Ian Blair, had discovered in 2006 that their voicemails had been targeted by the News of the World. The Met has strongly denied suggestions the force failed to investigate because of concerns about the disclosure of officers' private lives.

POliticians must go through the "awful experience" of having their "dirty linen washed in public" to get to the truth about phone hacking, Milly Dowler's family said.

At a meeting with Labour leader Ed Miliband, the murdered schoolgirl's parents Bob and Sally, urged him to push for an in-depth investigation, even though it may cause embarrassment to senior politicians.

Investigators working for the News of the World are believed to have hacked into the murdered schoolgirl's phone after she disappeared in 2002.