Leveson Inquiry: Paul Dacre stands firm over Grant David Sherborne, who is representing victims of phone hacking at the inquiry, said there were no fewer than eight references in the story to phones or phoning, and three or four references to the woman having a "plummy voice." But Mr Dacre told him: "This is three or four paragraphs in a 2,000 word piece." He said they had admitted that part of the story was wrong, and had paid damages to Mr Grant. Mr Dacre said at the time Mr Grant had insisted he knew no such woman and no woman existed of that kind. But the inquiry heard evidence was later produced that the woman with the "plummy voice" was Tricia Owen, an executive assistant to the president/CEO of Castle Rock Entertainment. Mr Dacre said: "Let's go back to the first day of the inquiry, it was an extraordinary occasion, there's never been an inquiry like this before, it was being televised, beamed around the world, it was a unique occasion. Mr Grant, a poster boy for the Hacked Off campaign, is giving evidence on the first day, an international film star. He makes his allegation, it was not an innocent piece of evidence, it had been drawn out of him by the inquiry. He makes it. He had not included it in his witness statement. He knew, I would suggest, the damage it would cause. After all, allegations of phone hacking has closed down a newspaper that has resulted in the loss of work by hundreds and hundreds of journalists. It was explosive and it was toxic. Mr Dacre said his inquiries had found there was no phone hacking at Associated Newspapers. He added: "All my inquiries, all the evidence that I have received and having spoken to the editors of my group, our group did not hack phones and I rather resent your continued insinuations that we did. I am satisfied that legitimate journalistic methods were used to obtain the source for the basis of these three paragraphs. Mr Dacre, the longest-serving Fleet Street editor, said Mr Grant had made several suggestions previously that the newspaper was involved in hacking. He told the inquiry he had to issue the statement accusing Mr Grant of "mendacious smears" as a strong rebuttal of the suggestion. "We had tried to be reasonable, we had tried to explain to him that this was not true and we needed to fight fire with fire," he said. Lord Justice Leveson said it was likely Mr Dacre would need to return to the inquiry to give his input on how the Press should move forward. Mr Dacre told the inquiry he thought the editor of the Mail Online should provide evidence to the inquiry on the problems posed by the internet for both the printed press and regulation. He said there was a huge demand for British journalism globally but if mainstream media was unable to address news stories available elsewhere it would look "increasingly irrelevant, especially to younger people."