6:09 AM
Trupasko
The former head of Rupert Murdoch's British newspaper company also finally succumbed to pressure to resign over the weekend.
Rebekah Brooks was then arrested after voluntarily meeting police to discuss the investigations into both the phone hacking by journalists and alleged payments to police for information.
Here in Australia the Government is continuing its attack on Murdoch group newspapers, accusing them of bias in their coverage of the carbon tax debate.
Shane McLeod reports.
SHANE MCLEOD: The UK's phone hacking scandal continues to claim high profile victims. London's police commissioner Paul Stephenson is the latest.
PAUL STEPHENSON: Let me state clearly, I and the people who know me, know that my integrity is completely intact. I may wish we had done some things differently but I will not lose any sleep over my personal integrity.
Nevertheless, I must accept that the intense media coverage, questions, commentary and indeed allegations as demonstrated by this weekend's attempts to misrepresent my arrangements for my recovery from illness, not only provide excessive distraction both for myself and colleagues but are likely to continue for some time.
SHANE MCLEOD: The scandal engulfed commissioner Stephenson over the engagement by police of a former News of the World executive editor, Neil Wallis, as a public relations consultant.
PAUL STEPHENSON: I have taken this decision as a consequence of the ongoing speculation and accusations relating to the Mets links with News International at a senior level and in particular in relation to Mr Neil Wallis who, as you know, was arrested in connection with Operation Weeting last week.
SHANE MCLEOD: Operation Weeting is one of the two active police investigations sparked by alleged bad behaviour at the News of the World newspaper.
Weeting is looking at the alleged phone hacking by the newspaper's journalists alongside it, Operation Elveden is investigating allegations of payments from journalists to police.
Officers from both investigations have questioned the former head of News International, Rebekah Brooks, and subsequently arrested her. She'll be expected to report back to police in October.
It's unclear whether that will affect her planned appearance at a parliamentary inquiry in London this week.
The former News of the World editor had said in a statement when she resigned that her departure would mean she could focus on cooperating fully with all the inquiries, police investigations and parliamentary hearings.
Liberal Democrat MP Adrian Sanders is a member of the committee that had been expecting Ms Brooks to appear this week.
ADRIAN SANDERS: I think most people will be aghast that somebody is able to make an arrangement for when they are going to be arrested. You have to ask yourself how many people facing questions regarding criminal acts are able to arrange the time of their arrest? So that is quite an unusual thing.
Two, for it to happen on a Sunday when the police would probably be on a skeleton staff and the kind of people that would be involved in such questions are likely not to be working on a Sunday.
In whose interest was it for this arrest to take place before Tuesday because if it does impede what we are able to ask, then that is not going to go down very well I think with my fellow committee members.
SHANE MCLEOD: There are rumblings within the parent company News Corporation about how the company has been handling the scandal.
Financial news service Bloomberg is reporting that independent directors of News Corp are questioning the company's response to the phone hacking crisis reportedly worried about the quality and quantity of information they have received.
Those directors will be watching the parliamentary hearings this week for signs that the company's chairman and founder, Rupert Murdoch is still in control of that response.
Here in Australia, News Corp's subsidiary News Limited is also in the firing line but over domestic politics.
A second government minister has unloaded on the group's newspapers for what he says is an editorial line against the Government's carbon tax plans.
On Radio National's Breakfast, the Communications Minister Stephen Conroy singled out the group's Sydney tabloid the Daily Telegraph for the harshest critique.
STEPHEN CONROY: The problem when you run a campaign …
FRAN KELLY: Is that campaign …
STEPHEN CONROY: Now the problem that you have when you run campaigns in newspapers is you are not prepared to give equal coverage to both sides of the argument. When you’re campaigning, you are suspending normal journalistic practice which is to be balanced and to give equal time to both sides.
But the Daily Telegraph is interested in distorting the debate, it is interested in demanding an election campaign purely intended to try and get rid of the Government.
SHANE MCLEOD: One of the newspaper's prominent columnists has already described Senator Conroy's comments as 'shooting the messenger'.
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