Met chiefs on drinking terms with former NoW deputy editor

Sir Paul Stephenson, the Metropolitan police commissioner, faces a parliamentary grilling this week

Guardian, Daniel Boffey and Mark Townsend, Saturday 16 July 2011

Sir Paul Stephenson in 2009. Photograph: Stephen Hird/Reuters

Sir Paul Stephenson, the Metropolitan Police commissioner, had social drinks on up to five occasions over the past two years with the former News of the World deputy editor who was arrested and then bailed last week.

Stephenson already faces a grilling this week by a parliamentary select committee over his recruitment of Neil Wallis as a public relations consultant last year. The commissioner has been accused of an error of judgment over the £24,000 contract he handed to Wallis, who worked at the NoW between 2003 and 2009, a period when hacking is alleged to have taken place.

Now it has emerged that beyond eight meals between 2006 and 2009 registered as business dinners with Wallis, and a further nine with other News International executives since 2005, the commissioner also socialised in his own time with the journalist at a time when the NoW was under at the centre of the scandal over phone hacking allegations.

The revelation will inevitably concern the home affairs select committee.

The home secretary has asked the judicial inquiry into phone hacking to investigate the Met's decision to hire Wallis as an adviser last year.

Last night Scotland Yard was forced to categorically deny claims in the New York Times that Wallis had provided strategic advice on the hacking investigation and had been "reporting back" to News International with information.

And Scotland Yard defended Stephenson's decision to accept the offer of a month's free stay when he was recovering from cancer at Champneys, a spa hotel represented by the Outside Organisation, where Wallis is managing director. They said Wallis had no involvement with the stay but the managing director of the hotel was a friend of 20 years who wanted to help the commissioner recover.

A Scotland Yard spokesman said: "The Wallis link is a total red herring."

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