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By The Drum Team, Editorial

July 29, 2011 | 2 min read

Conservative MP Louise Mensch has apologised to Piers Morgan after misquoting him during questioning of Rupert and James Murdoch.

In the questioning before a Commons committee, Mensch used Parliamentary Privilege to claim that the former Daily Mirror editor had been open about personally hacking phones in a book he wrote.

Mensch said her questions had been based on a “misreading” of a newspaper report on Mr Morgan's account of how the Mirror obtained its scoop on the affair between former England football manager Sven-Goran Eriksson and Ulrika Jonsson.

In a letter to the chairman of the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee, John Whittingdale, Mensch said that the statement was wrong, adding “Therefore, I must apologise to Mr Morgan and the committee for this error about his book.”

Mensch said: “The question for me was always was illegality confined to the News of the World and News International titles, or whether those papers had an air of entitlement in a Fleet Street culture where hacking and blagging was in fact widespread.

“I welcome the review announced by Trinity Mirror into practices in its newsroom.”

After the allegation had been made, Mensch and Morgan fought over the issue on TV, which can be seen below.

Former Sunday Mail editor, Noel Young, said last night: “Piers Morgan, super-confident , sophisticated, loyal friend of Rupert Murdoch, and CNN's replacement for Larry King, is not someone who would normally attract sympathy.

“But today he has my sympathy as American newspapers, magazines and websites pile on to his reputation, headlining innuendo, half-truths and the plain wrong statements perpetrated by MP Louise Mensch in that notorious session in Parliament last week. Heaven help us, if in the promised new drive to curb the press, she is the one in charge of the hanging party.”

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