British lawmakers formally summoned Rupert Murdoch and his son James Thursday to testify over the phone hacking scandal as the arrest of another ex-employee piled more pressure on the media mogul.
Rebekah Brooks, the chief executive of Murdoch’s British newspaper division, accepted an invitation to appear for questioning by parliament’s media committee next Tuesday, but the Murdochs had refused to attend, it said in a statement.
Police meanwhile arrested Neil Wallis, former executive editor of the News of the World, as the furore which has led to the closure of the tabloid and forced Murdoch to drop a takeover bid for satellite broadcaster BSkyB raged on. The scandal also threatened to spread to Australia and the United States where lawmakers called for an inquiry into whether Murdoch’s journalists there were involved in illegal practices like some of their British counterparts.
British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said they should appear before the committee “if they have any shred of sense of responsibility, of accountability for their position of power”.
The committee asked the Murdochs, both US citizens, and Brooks, a British national, to attend on Tuesday but bared its teeth when Rupert Murdoch, 80, said he was busy and James said he could only come on August 10.
It said it had “made clear its view that all three should appear to account for the behaviour of News International and for previous statements made to the Committee in Parliament, now acknowledged to be false.”
“Accordingly, the Committee has this morning decided to summon Rupert Murdoch and James Murdoch to appear” next Tuesday. In a letter to the committee, Murdoch said he was “fully prepared” to give evidence to a judge-led inquiry into the affair announced by Prime Minister David Cameron.
For Brooks, herself a former News of the World editor, it promises to be a tough session.
At her last committee appearance in 2003 she admitted: “We have paid the police for information in the past”, though she later said she was referring to the industry in general.
