Former Cabinet Minister claims his phone was bugged as phone hacking probe widens

dailymail.co.uk

A former Cabinet Minister today poured fuel on the phone hacking scandal by claiming his phone was bugged a decade ago.

Nick Brown says he thinks his calls were intercepted around the time the News of the World outed him as gay.

The politician, who was Chief Whip for Tony Blair when he first came to power, said five years later police also warned him calls from his mobile might have been intercepted.

He said: 'I picked up a landline telephone very quickly ... to make another call straight away.

'And the line clicked and then I heard my last conversation played back to me, which was quite eerie. I got on to British Telecom straight away,' he told the Newcastle Journal.

'They said the line showed every signs of having been intercepted manually, not through scanners. It was an amateurish attempt involving the physical intervention of the line with a recording device.'

Mr Brown added that he 'assumed' the hacking was carried out by someone working for a newspaper.

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