Give us your phone-hacking evidence, police tell media

(GETTY IMAGES)

Detectives investigating allegations that David Cameron's director of communications, Andy Coulson, presided over a culture of phone-hacking at the News of the World have written to two media organisations requesting "any new material" they have gathered.

The letters, sent by Scotland Yard to Channel 4 and The Guardian newspaper, follow a Dispatches documentary last week which featured claims from an anonymous former NOTW journalist that Mr Coulson listened to recordings of mobile phone voicemails that had been illegally obtained while he was editor of the Sunday newspaper. Mr Coulson has always denied that he knew about the practice.

Detective Superintendent Dean Haydon, the officer leading the Yard's re-investigation of the hacking claims which led to the jailing in 2007 of the NOTW's royal correspondent and a private investigator, has asked the media groups to disclose what they might be holding.

Detectives have not yet interviewed executives or journalists on the NOTW.

Alan Rusbridger, editor of The Guardian, replying to Mr Haydon, said: "If the intent of your inquiry is to uncover the extent of criminal behaviour within the NOTW at the relevant time we would suggest you try to speak to as many of the paper's former or current journalists as you can and to examine the evidence... which you already possess."