News Of the World

But Les Hinton, the former executive chairman of News International – now known as News UK – was cleared of misleading the culture, media and sport select committee during its investigation.

Crone had misled the culture committee in 2009 by giving a “counter-impression” of the significance of the confidentiality of the Gordon Taylor settlement, the scale of which was later concluded to relate to the fact he had been hacked.

Crone had misled the culture committee in 2009 by giving a “counter-impression” of the significance of the confidentiality of the Gordon Taylor settlement, the scale of which was later concluded to relate to the fact he had been hacked.

The finding by the select committee of privileges follows an excoriating report in 2012 from the culture select committee at the height of the scandal, which ultimately led to the closure of the News of the World and criminal proceedings against several senior journalists, including its former editor Andy Coulson.

A parliamentary committee has found the former News of the World editor Colin Myler and legal manager Tom Crone in contempt of the House of Commons over evidence they gave about the phone-hacking scandal.

The culture committee’s 121-page report on phone hacking concluded that News International executives sought to “buy silence” and downplay the extent of hacking at the paper when summoned to give evidence before the committee over several years.

He said it was “regrettable” that the culture committee had chosen to “ignore completely” the evidence he gave, which was that he had accepted “unequivocally” at the outset of his appearance that hacking went beyond the activities of the paper’s royal editor.

In a statement, he described the findings as “too little and too late”, coming so long after he was “vilified” by the committee.

Hinton was accused of “inexcusably” misleading of parliament over a £243,000 settlement with the former News of the World royal editor Clive Goodman, who had been jailed in 2007 for his part in phone hacking.

The committee concluded on Wednesday that Myler, who emerged unscathed from the phone-hacking scandal, had misled the culture committee by “answering questions falsely about [his] knowledge of evidence that other News of the World employees had been involved in phone hacking and other wrongdoing”.