? Calls for judicial inquiry after reporter is suspended
? Latest phone hacking allegation dates from earlier this year
? Four targets poised to sue police over failure to warn them

The government tonight came under pressure to set up a judicial inquiry into the phone hacking scandal at the News of the World after the paper confirmed that it has suspended a journalist while it investigates new allegations of the unlawful interception of voicemail.

The prime minister's media adviser, Andy Coulson, has denied a report in the New York Times which claimed he freely discussed the use of unlawful news-gathering techniques when he was editing the paper and "actively encouraged" a named reporter to engage in illegal interception of voicemail messages. Coulson has always denied knowing of any illegal activity by his journalists.

Scotland Yard, too, found itself in the firing line after the New York Times quoted unnamed detectives alleging they had cut short their investigation because of their close relationship with the News of the World. A group of four public figures, including former deputy prime minister John Prescott, is poised to sue police over a failure to warn them they had been targeted by the private investigator at the centre of the scandal, Glenn Mulcaire.

The Guardian has learned that the Metropolitan police commissioner at the time of the original investigation, Sir Ian Blair, was among those whose names were found in material seized from Mulcaire, raising questions about whether officers who were directly involved in the investigation had discovered that they, too, had been targets of the newspaper. It is understood Blair was assured at the time that his phone had not been hacked.

The former Labour minister Tom Watson today called on the government to set up an inquiry into the relationship between Scotland Yard and Rupert Murdoch's News Group, which publishes the News of the World. In a letter which was addressed to the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, in the absence of the prime minister, who is on paternity leave, Watson wrote: "The testimony given to the New York Times is that the police did not share all the relevant information with the Crown Prosecution Service, and that, if they had done, the CPS would have reached a different conclusion. These are clear grounds for a judicial inquiry.

"I think that information should be made available to the people concerned."

Amid signs of unease among the Tories' coalition partners at the new allegations about Coulson, a Lib Dem member of the Commons culture select committee has also called for an inquiry.

Adrian Sanders, MP for Torbay, said: "For the sake of justice a judicial inquiry would, along the lines of the Hutton inquiry, put this to bed once and for all."

At the end of the original police inquiry, in January 2007, Mulcaire and the News of the World's royal reporter, Clive Goodman, were jailed for illegally intercepting the voicemail messages of eight people. The Guardian last year revealed that the scandal involved other journalists at the paper and numerous other victims.

The News of the World today confirmed one of its reporters is currently suspended after his phone number was allegedly identified as the source of an unauthorised attempt earlier this year to access the voicemail of a public figure. The Guardian understands the suspended reporter has worked at the News of the World since January 2005, specialising in celebrity scoops. His name has not appeared in the paper since April. The reporter today did not return phone calls.

The paper's managing editor, Bill Akass, said it was still investigating the allegation. The Press Complaints Commission said it had been aware of the allegation since June but had chosen not to investigate because it was the subject of legal action by the alleged victim. In May the PCC's chair, Lady Buscombe, told Radio 4's Today programme: "If there was a whiff of any continuing activity in this regard, we would be on it like a ton of bricks. I can absolutely assure you of that."

Scotland Yard is facing legal action from four people whose names were found in material seized from Mulcaire in 2006 and who were not warned by police that they were potential victims. The former deputy prime minister, John Prescott, has written to them asking for an explanation for the failure. His solicitor, Dominic Crossley, said: "Absent a sufficient response, he will be beginning proceedings."

Prescott said tonight: "It's vital that the Met comes clean and reveals who and how many people were targeted by this rogue newspaper. We need to know the full truth."

The former Europe minister Chris Bryant, whose name and phone number were found in Mulcaire's possession and who was targeted by tabloid journalists, separately is preparing for a similar judicial review of the police conduct of the case.

Bryant is involved in a joint action with an investigative journalist, Brendan Montague, and one of Scotland Yard's former deputy assistant commissioners, Brian Paddick, whose name was found in Mulcaire's records but who was never warned by his own former colleagues.

Their solicitor, Tamsin Allen of Bindman, plans to ask the court to order Scotland Yard to hand over a list of all those who have been identified as potential victims. She said: "According to the rules, the claim and the pre-action letter should be served on anyone with a legitimate interest in the outcome. We say that that includes all of the people who are effected in the same way as our clients."

According to paperwork in the possession of the CPS and seen by the Guardian, Scotland Yard made repeated requests to prosecutors to "ring-fence" the evidence in order to conceal the names of "sensitive" victims. The paperwork also shows that, after studying phone records, the police found that "a vast number of unique voicemail numbers belonging to high profile individuals (politicians, celebrities) have been identified as being accessed without authority" but the officer in charge, Andy Hayman, subsequently claimed that they had found "only a handful" of victims, a claim which has been repeated by senior Yard officials in recent press briefings.

The lead Labour member on the Metropolitan Police Authority, Joanne McCart ney, tonight wrote to the Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson, asking for details of senior officers whose voicemail may have been intercepted by Mulcaire. "It is vital that the public can be confident the Met is investigating crime without fear or favour," she wrote.

Today it emerged another senior Scotland Yard officer at the time, Michael Fuller, was also on the list of names found in the private investigator's possession.

Scotland Yard has previously admitted that police officers as well as government, military and royal figures were among those who were warned they were potential victims, but they have refused to identify the individuals or even to say how many they warned.

Scotland Yard today dismissed the claims about them. "The Met does not consider the issues raised by the New York Times accurately reflect how the investigation was conducted," a spokesman said.

Other legal actions are also being launched. Sky TV football commentator Andy Gray, the former MP George Galloway, and Max Clifford's former assistant, Nicola Phillips, have all separately issued proceedings for invasion of privacy. And Mark Lewis, a solicitor who handled an earlier legal action, is suing Scotland Yard and the Press Complaints Commission in relation to remarks made in a speech made by Lady Buscombe last year. The PCC has formally apologised, but the case continues.

Others who are known to have had their voicemail accessed ? but who were not identified in the original court case ? include Prince William, Prince Harry, the then culturesecretary Tessa Jowell, Boris Johnson, the then-editor of the Sun Rebekah Brooks, Andy Coulson himself as editor of the News of the World, and the former England football manager Steve McClaren.

Arran Fernandez, who hit headlines in 2001 for his mathematical prowess, set to become university's youngest student since 1773

At 15, most teenagers are struggling to get their heads around the algebra and equations of maths GCSE. Not Arran Fernandez.

Next month, he will become the youngest student at Cambridge University for 237 years ? aged 15 and three months.

Arran, an only child who has been home schooled, will study maths at Cambridge, the youngest to attend the university since William Pitt the Younger was offered a place as a 14-year-old in 1773.

Arran first made headlines in 2001, aged five, when he gained the highest grade in the foundation maths paper. At the time he said he was considering becoming a lorry driver.

He has now decided he wants to be a research mathematician and find a solution to the Riemann hypothesis ? the unsolved theory about the patterns of prime numbers that has baffled mathematicians for 150 years.

Fernandez will live with his father, Neil, in rented accommodation. He said he would miss his mother, Hilde, who will stay at the family home in Surrey and see her son at weekends and in university holidays.

The teenager plans to join the university's bird watching society and develop his interest in English literature.

"I'm excited about starting the course and advancing my knowledge of maths," he said. "It isn't the youngest bit that is so important to me ? I am more interested in going to Cambridge than comparing myself with other people who go there."

He was not upset that he would be barred from the bar at the college that has offered him a place ? Fitzwilliam College.

"I don't feel like I'm missing out on much. Even if I was 18, I wouldn't want to go out drinking," he said.

His parents said they were very proud of their son, who scored an A* in maths GCSE aged seven and has just achieved top grades in maths, further maths and physics A-level.

He will join the likes of Isaac Newton, who also studied at Cambridge, and Stephen Hawking, who like Newton was Lucasian Professor of Mathematics there. But he will also be following the path of other child prodigies, some of whom have come to regret being separated from their peer group and starting university so early.

Sufiah Yusof achieved a place at St Hilda's College, Oxford University, in 1997, to study maths at the age of 13. But In 2001, she ran away after taking her final exam for the academic year. She was discovered working as a waitress in a Bournemouth internet cafe two weeks later, but refused to return home. She claimed her parents had made life difficult for her and lived with a foster family instead. She never finished her course.

In March 2008, a reporter for the News of the World found her advertising as a prostitute under the name Shilpa Lee. She is now said to be working as a social worker.

In 1985, Ruth Lawrence became Oxford University's youngest-ever maths graduate at 13. She had been tutored by her father. She is now a maths professor in Israel, married with two children and has said she would not want to do the same to her son.

Paul Chirico, a senior tutor at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, said Arran had achieved the conditions of his offer to read maths. "Fitzwilliam considers all applications to the college very carefully, regardless of background. Arran was assessed as part of this well-established process and his considerable academic potential was recognised." Children cannot live in student accommodation, because the university cannot carry out criminal record checks on all the other undergraduates.

The National Patient Safety Agency issues alert following death of baby girl given too high amount of dextrose

Hospitals have been told to take care when giving infants intravenous doses of fluids or drugs, after a baby girl died after a glucose overdose at Great Ormond Street children's hospital in London.

The National Patient Safety Agency has drawn the NHS's attention to the risk of newborn babies accidentally receiving large amounts of such substances.

It follows the death in 2009 of Poppy Davies, who was just a few weeks old when she was given far more dextrose than was intended to help her regain energy after an operation. There have been five other similar "near misses" involving newborns since 2003, the NPSA said today when issuing one of its periodic rapid response reports (RRRs). The alerts instruct the NHS to improve the safety surrounding a particular drug or procedure after concerns have been raised.

Doctors and nurses should be careful to check that the correct dose is being given and that syringe pumps used to administer medication are used properly, it says.

Peter Walsh, chief executive of patient safety group Action against Medical Accidents, said: "Problems with the administration of drugs is known to be one of the most common accidents causing serious harm in healthcare. With neonates the risks are obviously even higher and the consequences more likely to be very serious, so it is essential that every precaution is taken to avoid perfectly avoidable tragedies such as this. Credit should go to the coroner for raising the alarm to the NPSA."

But the NHS's poor record in implementing previous RRRs meant hospitals might not take the action recommended by the NPSA, he added. He said the Care Quality Commission, the NHS regulator for England, should ensure that alerts were acted upon. "Unless someone takes action to ensure these well intentioned alerts are actually implemented, there will be further tragedies like this," he said.

The Journey is fine, Tony. A bigger problem is the destination

? So the Journey is well under way and what a Journey it is: the fastest selling political memoir in British political history, it is said. But many of the passengers are disgruntled. Saddening, says Andy Burnham. The "memoirs of a certified delusional", according to Michael Meacher. "Low grade soap opera," protests Diane Abbott. And the biggest problem for many is the driver ? does he even know where he is going? "To assuage Nationalist opinion and under pressure from the Irish, I also ordered an inquiry into the Bloody Sunday shootings in 1972, when British troops had opened fire on protesters in Belfast, killing a number of people," he says on page 165 of the memoir. But as passengers remember it, Bloody Sunday occurred in Derry, more than 70 miles away, and at the other end of the province. No wonder they're unhappy.

? What about the timing? Was it the whole intention, as some have claimed, to lob a stinkbomb into the ongoing leadership campaign? Not at all, says Alastair Campbell. "The date was set before the leadership timetable." But unless we are to believe that someone messed up big time, the rumours will persist. Right now, we understand, a secret panel of judges convened by the Literary Review is considering those passages of prose that might be deemed worthy of a Bad Sex Award when the gongs are handed out in December. The timing, they tell us, puts Blair very much in contention. How could he not be? "On that night of the 12th May, 1994, I needed that love Cherie gave me, selfishly. I devoured it to give me strength," recalls the former prime minister. "I was an animal following my instinct, knowing I would need every ounce of emotional power to cope with what lay ahead. I was exhilarated, afraid and determined in roughly equal quantities." He always was a winner. Now he can be again. Go Tony!

? And now that his book is here, there and everywhere, how should we view Peter Mandelson's account of the New Labour years? Should we adopt Alastair Campbell's view of the Mandy book, as told to BBC radio. "An ego trip," he said sorrowfully. "And a bit sad."

? The times are sad, and with that in mind here is an instant media opportunity courtesy of the Daily Mail. "We are urgently looking for a woman who has had multiple miscarriages and still has not had a baby, following on from the sad news about Ffion Hague," said a missive sent to PRs and media types from a toiler on the paper yesterday. "We can pay you for taking part, and happy to mention any supportive organisations. We would need to talk to, and photograph you, today so can you email me ASAP." Yes, there's no time to lose. Let them share your pain.

? And as MPs prepare to return to Westminster next week, evidence that they are becoming ever more inquisitive. Figures reveal that in the 2010-11 session of parliament to date, MPs have tabled 12,080 questions for written answer. That, says blogger John Slinger, means a cost to the taxpayer of £1.9m using the accepted formula of £154 per question. In the previous year MPs tabled 25,467 written questions. So this year it has taken members just two months to reach 50% of the total racked up throughout the entire preceding parliamentary session. Neil Hamilton should have stuck around. The trend might have made him rich.

? Still he is the past, we look to the future ? and in particular, the bright future that beckons for the unnamed Ed Miliband volunteer who called Barrow-in-Furness yesterday to drum up support for his Labour leadership candidate. "You're a Labour party member aren't you, John," the canvasser said confidently. "Yes I am," replied John Woodcock, the local MP.

? Finally, with a profile to raise and a book to promote, he is here, there and everywhere; the sprinter Usain Bolt musing on love, life, football and anything else interviewers care to ask of him. What are you currently working on, asked 5 Live's Richard Bacon. "Running faster," said Usain. You don't say!

The very possibility of bisexuality can sometimes run into the same disbelief that Queen Victoria is said to have shown towards lesbianism

It has to be said that something is awry when rumours about a politician's sexuality leave him feeling forced to publicise the miscarriages his wife has suffered. Quite what that something is, however, is harder to pinpoint than it would have been in the past. William Hague made his extraordinary statement on Wednesday despite serving in a government alongside openly gay ministers. Homosexuality is not the bar to office that it once was, and yet gay politicians face a distinctive pressure to declare themselves as such.

While suggestions that the foreign secretary is anything other than straight are no more than gossip, in a truly tolerant society there would be nothing to gossip about. To see that there still is, consider the case of Crispin Blunt, the prisons minister who last week let the press know he was leaving his wife to "come to terms" with being gay. While it may indeed be OK to be gay in public life, it is not done to be unsure about it. The very possibility of bisexuality can sometimes run into the same disbelief that Queen Victoria is said to have shown towards lesbianism. In this warped context the harrowing experience of marital miscarriage can be offered up to counter allegations of sleeping with men, whereas it should be no more material than it would be in the case of an affair with a woman.

All sorts of people are coy in discussing who tugs on their heartstrings. But from Ron Davies' "moment of madness" 12 years ago to David Laws' resignation this spring, politicians of all stripes have paid a price for being anything less than upfront about any attraction they feel towards the same sex. That price is perhaps especially high for those cut from conservative cloth. This is less a point about the top of today's Conservative party, which David Cameron has gone to some lengths to lead towards tolerance, than about those parts of society where old prejudices still lurk. Homophobia has touched all wings of politics over the decades, but it is most easy to find on the right. Fusty assumptions that liberals first challenged two generations ago have only faced serious challenge within reactionary circles during the last few years. Some of the mud hurled Mr Hague's way seems to trace back to his own constituency association, while Mr Blunt's local party is reportedly "unhappy" that he had dared to keep his private feelings private. While the slow tide towards tolerance appears irreversible, Mr Cameron's own vote against fair access to IVF for would-be lesbian mothers is another reminder that it has a way to go.

The prime minister was nonetheless standing solidly with his foreign secretary yesterday, just as he stood alongside Mr Blunt, whose welcome political survival is a heartening reminder of how times have progressed. It has often been said that sex itself is less politically poisonous than all the connected questions of finance, probity or supposed security risks, and that is doubly true today. The only possible public interest question in connection with Mr Hague is whether any hypothetical feelings he harboured for his aide Chris Myers prompted him to appoint him as a special adviser. Even if this did happen, it is not certain that any rule would have been broken, since such rules as there are state that advisers are "exempt from the general requirement that civil servants should be appointed on merit".

Just as MPs were once able to appoint their spouses as secretaries, ministers recruiting advisers are still unaccountable for their choice. As we report today, the coalition is placing political staffers into supposedly apolitical official roles, perhaps to avoid taking flak for creating more of the unpopular special adviser posts. That is the wrong response, but so is a kneejerk bar on all political appointees. In order to work with an apolitical bureaucracy, ministers need to be able make a few appointments of their own. They ought, however, to be answerable for these. Making them so would help to prevent private lives from being dragged into the public mire.

Poverty affects grades less among non-white children with social divide noticeable from primary school

A child's social class is more likely to determine how well they perform in school if they are white than if they come from an ethnic minority, researchers have discovered.

The gap between the proportion of working-class pupils and middle-class pupils who achieve five A* to C grades at GCSE is largest among white pupils, academics found.

They analysed official data showing thousands of teenagers' grades between 2003 and 2007. Some 31% of white pupils on free school meals ? a key indicator of poverty ? achieve five A* to Cs, compared with 63% of white pupils not eligible for free school meals, they found.

This gap between social classes ? of 32 percentage points ? is far higher for white pupils than for other ethnic groups.

For Bangladeshi pupils, the gap is seven percentage points, while for Chinese pupils it is just five percentage points, the researchers discovered.

The study ? Ethnicity and class: GCSE performance ? will be presented to the British Educational Research Association conference at Warwick University tomorrow.

It argues that one of the reasons why class determines how white pupils perform at school is that white working-class parents may have lower expectations of their children than working-class parents from other ethnic groups.

The researchers, from the Institute of Education and Queen Mary, both part of the University of London, also found that Chinese pupils from families in routine and manual jobs perform better than white pupils from managerial and professional backgrounds. They also discovered that African and Bangladeshi girls had vastly improved their GCSE grades in the last few years.

Professor Ramesh Kapadia, who led the study, said this may be linked to "cultural aspirations and expectations, as well as parental support for education. This appears to have been the case for Indian and Chinese pupils for many years," he said.

A separate study has found that a similar pattern can be identified for children in primary schools: social class is more likely to determine how well a pupil will perform if that child is white than if they are from other ethnic groups.

Researchers from the University of Warwick analysed the scores of pupils living in the south London borough of Lambeth. White children from well-off homes were the top-performing ethnic group at the age of 11, while white pupils eligible for free school meals had among the worst test results.

Professor Steve Strand, who will present the findings to the British Educational Research Association's conference today, said the effects of poverty are "much less pronounced for most minority ethnic groups".

"Those from low socio-economic backgrounds seem to be much more resilient to the impact of disadvantage than their white British peers," he said.

However, he added that well-off white children may do particularly well because their parents might be "a bit more savvy about ensuring that they go to schools with similar pupils".

"More recent immigrant groups, such as the Portuguese, Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities often see education as the way out of the poverty they have come from. By contrast, if you've been in a white working-class family for three generations, with high unemployment, you don't necessarily believe that education is going to change that.

"All of these factors may combine to make the effect of socio-economic status remarkably strong for white British kids."

Meanwhile, headteachers' leaders have warned secondary schools to consider axing subjects that few pupils take to cope with imminent budget cuts.

The Association of School and College Leaders told the Times Educational Supplement that A-levels in foreign languages, for example, could be scrapped. Last week, French dropped out of the top 10 most popular GCSEs for the first time. "Languages in some schools will be vulnerable," he said. "We are already worried about them and this could speed up the decline."

How convenient for the Crown Prosecution Service that the General Medical Council's damning indictment of Dr Freddy Patel's conduct of postmortems didn't come out before it took its predictable decision not to proceed with any prosecution over the death of Ian Tomlinson (Report, 31 August). Now the CPS has abandoned the matter, the inquest takes on enhanced significance. The City of London coroner's decision to appoint Dr Patel means the postmortem evidence is so muddled that the inquest may not even be able to do its most basic task and determine how Ian Tomlinson died. But the inquest has a wider remit. It has to view the issue more widely than can be done by the Metropolitan police's internal disciplinary focus on PC Simon Harwood. It also has to assess the belated review of its own inadequate investigation that the Independent Police Complaints Commission has been required to produce, without allowing the IPCC to delay further. To achieve this Kenneth Clarke must replace the City of London coroner with a suitably qualified judge to conduct the inquest with due impartiality and appreciation of the needs of Ian Tomlinson's family and the wider issues of justice and accountability.

Mary Pimm & Nik Wood

London

? The CPS has said that it is not possible to prosecute any police officer over the death of Ian Tomlinson. The reason for this is that a man who is suspended from duty as a forensic pathologist, and has now been found guilty of misconduct, disagrees with two professional pathologists about the cause of death. That decision must now be reconsidered.

Chris Wade-Evans

London

Middle-class families still dominate best schools despite attempts to close class gap

Middle-class families monopolise the best schools even when a lottery is used to allocate places, according to a study published today.

Lotteries have been seen by some educationists as a way of reducing deep-seated class divisions in the school system. The highest-performing schools tend to cluster in the wealthiest neighbourhoods; if places are allocated according to how near a family lives to a school ? rather than by a lottery ? children from the poorest areas miss out.

Lotteries are said to be used to distribute places in at least one school in up to a third of councils across England. In Brighton and Hove, all pupils have been assigned secondary school places in this way for the past two years.

But researchers have found lotteries alone fail to give poor children a higher chance of attending a top school, and marginally narrow the likelihood they will win a place at a high-performing school.

Their study analysed how far Brighton and Hove's lottery admissions system had improved the chances of poor pupils attending top schools, and who the main winners and losers were when places were allocated randomly.

The researchers, from the Institute of Education, University of London and the University of Bristol, analysed which schools thousands of pupils attended before and after the lottery system was implemented. The study is being presented to the British Educational Research Association conference today.

Brighton and Hove council does not allocate places entirely randomly. Parents can apply to any school, but priority is given to those who live within a designated catchment area. First, a lottery is used to decide who gets a place within a catchment area. A second lottery is used for any spare places that are not filled by those within a school's catchment area. But there are few spare places for children outside the catchment area of the best schools, so the lottery does not help the poorest, the academics found.

Pupils on free school meals ? a key indicator of poverty ? were "slightly" more likely to be at school with other pupils on free school meals under Brighton's lottery system than under the previous system that allocated places to families living nearest the school to which they have applied, the academics discovered.

They also found that when places were assigned through a lottery, the brightest pupils, as well as the poorest, lost out. Pupils with high scores were less likely to attend a high-performing school than they would otherwise.

Rebecca Allen, senior lecturer in the economics of education at the Institute of Education and one of the main authors, said Brighton's lottery system would just lead to families relocating to the catchment areas of the best schools. House prices would adjust and keep the poorest families out of these neighbourhoods.

"It seems unlikely the reforms will substantially lower social segregation across schools even in the long run," Allen said.

"Differences in the quality of housing stock across areas of Brighton are deeply entrenched and the boundaries of the new catchment areas mean that families living in the most deprived neighbourhoods have little chance of accessing the most popular schools in the centre of the city."

The study, on the early impact of Brighton and Hove's school admissions reforms, will be published by the Centre for Market and Public Organisation at the University of Bristol.

Currently a pupil eligible for free school meals is 30% more likely to attend a school with exam results ? well below the national average than an otherwise identical child from a better-off family.

PM under pressure to sack director of communications following new allegations in New York Times over unlawful phone hacking

David Cameron was tonight facing renewed pressure to sack Andy Coulson as the Downing Street director of communications in the face of new allegations in the New York Times that he discussed unlawful phone tapping.

In a sign that this could strain the coalition government, a senior Liberal Democrat MP said police should be prepared to summon Coulson for questioning if the new evidence merits further investigation.

Adrian Sanders, a member of the Commons culture select committee which has investigated the phone tapping allegations, said: "If the allegations in the New York Times are substantiated there is a real case for the police to investigate. Under police investigation they may be able to get more information out of Mr Coulson than we were in a select committee. I think he would feel the need to elaborate a little more than he did in our committee."

Labour and the Lib Dems intensified the pressure on Coulson after the New York Times published fresh evidence which directly linked the prime minister's senior aide to phone tapping while editor of the News of the World. Coulson, who denies the latest allegations, told the Commons culture select committee last year: "I have never had any involvement in it at all."

But Labour called for Coulson to be sacked. Chris Bryant, the shadow Europe minister who is embarking on a judicial review of the police's conduct amid evidence that his phone was hacked, said he found it hard to believe Coulson did not know about the tapping.

In a Guardian article today, Bryant writes: "It ... seems extraordinary that Andy Coulson is still the prime minister's director of communications and planning. He has already admitted that under his watch News International paid police officers for information ... I find it hard to believe that he didn't know how his scoops were being sourced.

"The most worrying aspect of all this is that unless the police take proper action these illegal practices will carry on. And unless David Cameron sacks Coulson he will be openly condoning some of the dirtiest politics in Britain."

Ed Miliband, the Labour leadership contender, said that the prime minister faced a test of judgment. "These are potentially very serious allegations made against a top Downing Street official by a newspaper that is well respected around the world. This report in the New York Timesalleges a much more systematic abuse of people's privacy during Andy Coulson's tenure as a Sunday newspaper editor than was previously thought.

" This is a test of David Cameron's judgment. It is the prime minister's responsibility to ensure the integrity of the office with which he has been entrusted, and it is David Cameron's responsibility nowto give people a final answer on the Coulson saga: are these allegations true?"

"David Cameron must establish the truth and if the allegations are accurate then it is impossible to see how Andy Coulson can continue to act as a senior Downing Street adviser, with the integrity demanded of someone in that position. Either way, the prime minister should now take full responsibility for bringing the damaging Coulson saga to an end."

Sanders highlighted Lib Dem unease over Coulson who is the immediate boss in the Downing Street press office to Nick Clegg's former deputy prime minister's chief of staff Lena Pietsch. Sanders said Cameron would have to consider Coulson's future if the police decide to question him.

"If the police were to call him in for questioning that is a matter the prime minister would seriously have to consider. If the allegations are true they are so serious and so fundamental to how the press operates in this country that it becomes indefensible."

Downing Street is confident that the latest allegations pose no threat to Coulson who strenuously denies that he knew about the phone tapping.

The latest phone hacking revelations make the story even more shocking. David Cameron must sack Andy Coulson

With the allegations in the New York Times linking Andy Coulson to phone hacking while he was editor of the News of the World, it is becoming clearer day by day that the sticky carpet of British journalism ? with honourable exceptions ? is in profound need of a good steam-clean.

It was pretty shocking when I asked Coulson and Rebekah Wade (then the Sun's editor) during a select committee investigation on media intrusion in March 2003 whether they had ever paid a police officer for information ? and Wade replied that they had, and Coulson added that he would do so again, adding, weasel-like, "within the law". It's shocking because it must be an offence to suborn a police officer, and the chequebook-enticed leaking from police investigations has all too often compromised them so seriously that no prosecution has been possible.

It was even more alarming when we discovered that Glenn Mulcaire had hacked his way into the messages of the princes. He went to prison, and although Coulson denied all knowledge of it, he resigned as editor. All along, the line of News International (the newspapers' owner) has been that this was just one bad apple, but the clear evidence is that it was a far more sustained campaign.

Two things remain truly disturbing. First, the Metropolitan police have manifestly failed to pursue their investigations with anything like the full vigour of the law. Last summer I wrote to them on the offchance that, as a Labour MP, I might have been another target of Mulcaire's illegal activities. The police reply in December confirmed that they had indeed secured material relating to me from Mulcaire and that it might be worth my while contacting my phone company, who then confirmed that there had been several attempts to access information on my phone in 2003.

What is astounding is that the police had not thought to mention this to me beforehand. Nor, as I understand it, have they informed many, if any, of the thousands of others who may have been targeted by Mulcaire and the News of the World. So despite having evidence that the tapping and hacking may have been far more extensive than Coulson or Mulcaire admit, the police have only investigated further or prosecuted in relation to a tiny proportion of those almost certainly affected. It is as if they have decided it's not on to tackle the royal family but that the rest of society is fair game.

Yet surely it is the job of the police to protect all victims of illegal hacking, and it would be wholly wrong to allow any consideration about the power of News International to prevent the full force of the law being brought to bear. After all, it seems as if we are talking about more than 3,000 people. We rightly balk at the idea of the security services tapping MPs, but it seems that dozens of MPs were among Mulcaire's targets, along with many celebrities and journalists.

Second, it seems extraordinary that Coulson is still the prime minister's director of communications. He has admitted that under his watch News International paid police officers for information. For all we know this was a regular habit. The New York Times claims that during his time he freely discussed Mulcaire-style "investigations" with his journalists and that these unlawful news-gathering techniques were pervasive. Coulson denies this, and has asserted this to parliament. I find it hard to believe he didn't know how his scoops were being sourced.

The most worrying aspect of all this is that unless the police take proper action, these illegal practices will carry on. And unless David Cameron sacks Coulson, he will be openly condoning some of the dirtiest politics in Britain.