Scotland Yard yesterday said it has absolutely ‘no evidence’ that News of the World journalists deleted Milly Dowler’s voicemail messages. 

The police force’s barrister made a dramatic intervention at the Leveson inquiry into press standards.

Neil Garnham QC said the ‘most likely explanation’ for the disappearance of the messages is that they automatically ‘dropped off’ the network after 72 hours.

The doting mother: Sally Dowler, pictured with her daughter Milly, has spoken of the false hope she felt when she discovered that messages had been deleted from Milly's voicemail

It was the toxic claim that journalists deleted the messages – giving Milly’s parents hope that she might be alive – which provoked a public outcry, brought about the closure of the Sunday tabloid and led to David Cameron establishing the media standards inquiry.

Mr Garnham also revealed that, since the bombshell story appeared in the Guardian in July, police had been blocked from contacting the Dowler family to explain how part of it might have been incorrect.

He continued: ‘I can say that the Metropolitan Police did not tell the Dowlers that voicemails had been deleted for the simple reason that they did not know of any such deletions.’

The new developments appear to undermine one of the foundation stones of Lord Justice Leveson’s mammoth task just weeks after it began and yesterday the judge himself admitted the ‘significant’ revelations go to the very root of the reason for his wide-ranging review.

They also appear to explode the myth that the Sunday paper’s journalists were routinely deleting messages. Lord Justice Leveson said: ‘It strikes me that this information is of significance, bearing in mind the importance of the original announcement in the context of the setting up of this inquiry.’ 

He also suggested Surrey Police officers might have to appear before his inquiry to throw light on what happened to the voicemails in the days after 13-year-old Milly disappeared.

Last night Tom Latchem, a former News of the World reporter, said: ‘This allegation [that reporters deleted the voicemails] really made me feel sick. I thought, “Why am I working for a company that would fund the hacking of a mobile and deletion of messages adding to the pain of an already suffering family?” To find out this isn’t true makes me feel bad.’

The Metropolitan Police is leading the criminal investigation into phone hacking, Operation Weeting. Its QC Mr Garnham spoke out following the publication of stories at the weekend that the deletions might not have been carried out by News of the World journalists.

He said police now believed it was ‘unlikely’ that the messages were deleted by Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator who worked for the News of the World. He has denied erasing the messages and police have evidence which suggests the newspaper did not ask him to work on the Dowler case until later, the inquiry heard.

Mr Garnham said officers on Operation Weeting had no evidence that other journalists from News International, the owners of the News of the World, had deleted Milly’s voicemail.

Lawyers acting for phone hacking victims, including Bob and Sally Dowler, insisted they had evidence that News International had accessed her messages.

Family: The Dowlers had a meeting with David Cameron after the hacking allegations first came to light

However Mr Garnham also revealed that Met Police Service officers had wanted to brief the Dowlers about their theory that the messages were automatically deleted. He told the inquiry: ‘The MPS wanted to speak to Mr and Mrs Dowler to provide them with this information. They spoke to the Dowlers’ solicitor, Mark Lewis.

‘Mr Lewis thanked the MPS for the approach but indicated that the Dowlers would prefer not to be spoken to by police at this stage.’ Mr Garnham said police could not yet provide ‘a comprehensive explanation’ for how Milly’s voicemail messages were deleted.

But he added: ‘It is conceivable that other News International journalists deleted the voicemail, but the Metropolitan Police Service have no evidence to support that proposition and current inquiries suggest that is unlikely.

The relevant phone network provider has confirmed that this was a standard automatic function of that voice mailbox system at the time.’ He also pointed out that the Dowlers had not told the Leveson inquiry that journalists were responsible for the deletions.

The crucial article in the Guardian on July 5 said officers from Surrey Police, which led the original Dowler investigation, were ‘concerned about how News of the World journalists intercepted and deleted voicemail messages of Milly Dowler.’

The article said journalists had erased messages to make space for more messages, leading friends and family of the missing girl to believe she could be alive.

Mr Garnham said police did not know where the Guardian had got its information, adding: ‘That matter is the subject of further investigation.’

Guardian journalist Nick Davies, who wrote the story, was defiant last night. He dismissed as ‘delusional’ critics who said the claims about the deletion of voicemails were a key factor in the demise of the newspaper.

He said: ‘The new evidence confirmed almost everything I had reported in July of this year. But one important element shifted: the police could no longer be sure exactly who had caused the particular deletions that led to that “false hope” moment.’

WHY BRITAIN NEEDS A STRONG PRESS, BY MAIL CHAIRMAN

By MICHAEL SEAMARK   Britain needs a financially viable and editorially independent press to protect and benefit society, MPs and peers heard yesterday.   This is in everyone’s interest, said Viscount Rothermere (right), chairman of Daily Mail and General Trust – publishers of the Daily Mail.   Giving evidence to the Joint Committee on Privacy and Injunctions, he was asked whether the publishing of private information played an important part in a newspaper’s viability.   He said: ‘I believe certainly that the newspaper industry does a lot of good for people in this country. It raises a lot of causes, raises a lot of money for charity and seeks out and exposes corruption. So yes, it has to have a financially viable model.’   The committee, comprising 13 MPs and 13 members of the House of Lords, was set up by David Cameron in May to see whether the law should change amid a row over the growing number of privacy rulings and the use of injunctions.   Lord Rothermere said there was a view that the pendulum had swung too far and become too restrictive, but he added: ‘I have faith in the judiciary.’ He was asked whether the disappearance of Madeleine McCann in Portugal in May 2007 and the subsequent newspaper coverage had caused him concern.   Lord Rothermere told the committee: ‘My papers write about many things that give me personal cause of concern but I feel it’s my duty to allow the editors their job to edit and if I picked up the phone every single time I disagreed with an article then I think their job would become an awful lot harder to do.   ‘I am very deeply sympathetic to everything the McCanns have gone through.’   He said he trusted his editors and it was not his role as proprietor to interfere. ‘It is our job to stand back and fiercely defend their independence. We believe we make the best newspapers we can by allowing our editors editorial freedom.’   Lord Rothermere said he thought the Press Complaints Commission has done a good job although ‘there are areas for improvement’.   He defended the presence of newspaper editors on the self-regulatory body ‘in the same way that the BMA has doctors on its council’.   Asked when standards are an issue to a proprietor, he replied: ‘I care about standards – standards are important.’