Leveson inquiry: Times executives knew reporter had hacked emails before High Court case He did, identifying the person at the heart of the story, using his own sources and information publicly available on the Internet. On that basis, we made the case in the High Court that the newspaper should be allowed to publish in the public interest. Lord Justice Leveson suggested "that information in that letter should have been given to the court before Mr Justice Eady," adding: "That's an issue which I will have to think about, of course." Mr Justice Eady had agreed to lift an injunction preventing The Times from naming the blogger after the newspaper said Mr Foster had deduced the policeman's identity using publicly available information. After the letter was read out to David Allen Green, the legal affairs correspondent of the New Statesman, who was giving evidence to the Inquiry, he said: "It's odd that that information wasn't given at the time of witness statements." Mr Allen Green said Mr Foster appeared to have found out the blogger's name first, then worked "backwards" to show that he could have found his identity by cross-referencing publicly available sources. David Barr, counsel to the inquiry, asked if there was an "unanswered question" over whether "anything that was gained from the email hacking was used to assist the identification." Mr Allen Green replied: "It seems to me that if you have used an email hack as part of an investigation, you can't artificially pretend you never did that...my concern is this should have been before the court at the injunction application." Mr Foster was disciplined over the computer hacking and later dismissed from The Times over an unrelated incident. The Labour MP Tom Watson, who has called for Mr Harding to be questioned in Parliament over computer hacking, said last night that Mr Harding should be asked if he had personally been aware at the time of the cour case that Mr Foster had hacked the email account and if so, why Mr Justice Eady was not told.