Phone-hacking scandal: Police outside the gates of News International's headquarters. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA
The technology firm HCL has told the home affairs select committee it was aware of the deletion of hundreds of thousands of emails at the request of News International between April 2010 and July 2011, but said it did not know of anything untoward behind the requests to delete them.
HCL has sent the letter to the home affairs select committee chairman, Keith Vaz , revealing it had been involved in nine separate episodes of email deletion.
HCL says it is not the company responsible for emails on the News International system that are older than a couple of weeks. It says another unnamed vendor is responsible, but confirms it has co-operated with this vendor in deleting material.Through a letter from HCL's solicitors Stuart Benson, the firm says: "My client is aware of nothing which appeared abnormal, untoward or inconsistent with its contractual role." It adds: "It is entirely for News International, the police and your committee as to whether there was any other agenda or subtext when issues of deletion arose and that is a matter on which my client cannot comment and something you will no doubt wish to explore direct with News International."
It stressed that since it was not the company that stored News International's data "any suggestion or allegation that it has deleted material held on behalf of News International is without foundation".
HCL identified three sets of email deletions in April 2010, including a deletion of a public folder of a live email system that "was owned by a user who no longer needed the emails".
A further 200,000 emails stuck in an outbox were deleted in May 2010 to restore email functionality. In September 2010 a further pruning of historic emails occurred to help stabilise the email archival system, which had been having "frequent outages" since November 2009.
In January 2011 HCL was asked about its ability to truncate a particular database in the email archival systems. HCL "answered in the negative and suggested assistance from the third party vendor". HCL stated no reason as to why it was unable to assist.
In February 2011 emails were deleted in an older version of Microsoft. Finally, in July 2011 HCL helped delete emails from the live system as relocation errors had occurred during migration from one system to the other.
Separately, a firm of solicitors drawn into the News International phone-hacking scandal is expected to reply shortly to the home affairs select committee as to how it came to write a key letter to the newspaper group that was then used by the company to contend that phone hacking had not been widespread.
The firm, Harbottle and Lewis, is consulting the Metropolitan police before deciding how to reply to requests from the select committee to spell out how it came to write a letter taken to mean that only one reporter was aware of phone hacking at the paper.
The New York Times reported at the weekend that the letter sent by Harbottle and Lewis to the culture, media and sport select committee was redrafted more than once. The firm had been hired to review the email of the tabloid's royal reporter, Clive Goodman, who had pleaded guilty to hacking the mobile phone messages of royal household staff members. The letter said "no reasonable evidence" had been found that senior editors knew about the reporter's "illegal actions".
The home affairs select committee asked:
• "What was the exact remit given to Harbottle and Lewis when it was instructed by News International in 2007?"
• "The contents of emails and information held in the file you mentioned in your letter."
• "What advice was provided from Harbottle and Lewis to News International in 2007 following examination of the emails and information?"
• "Why the evidence you had in 2007 that was later examined by Lord McDonald in 2011 was not acted upon sooner?"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/aug/01/phone-hacking-news-international-emails
