The Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, has written to Lib Dem councillors to consult us on courses of action to take resulting from the shocking allegations of widespread phone hacking by the News of the World

There will be inquiries into both the original police investigation and also the behaviour of the British press, their practices and ethics – and the details of those inquiries will be agreed by the party leaders.

He will make it clear that the inquiries must be independent, open, able to access all information and call witnesses, and that crucially the inquiry dealing with legal issues (e.g. relationship between police and media) must be presided over by a judge.

David and I would be happy to feed back views from people in our ward – please let us have your comments by Friday 8 July and we will send them through to Nick’s phone hacking scandal team