News International has been cleared of being in contempt of parliament over phone-hacking evidence given to MPs.
A long-delayed report by the Commons committee of privileges concludes that there was insufficient evidence to find a breach of parliamentary privilege by the company, which was renamed News UK in 2013, as had been claimed.
The evidence that the company provided to the culture, media and sports committee (CMSC) when it was investigating phone-hacking was not misleading, the privileges committee found.
The history, decisions, actions and omissions of News International had been set out in the Leveson report, MPs said. Their task was not to adjudicate on those actions but to look at whether evidence to the CMSC was misleading; and “on the evidence available to this