Having been jailed in 2007 for hacking phones on behalf of the News of the World, Glenn Mulcaire this week pleaded for understanding. “I knew what we did pushed the limits ethically,” the private investigator told The Guardian. “But, at the time, I didn’t understand that I had broken the law at all.”

Pushing the limits is a weak way of describing the News of the World’s actions in 2002 in hacking into the voicemail of Milly Dowler, the missing teenager who was later found murdered, and deleting messages to make space for others that might give it an exclusive story. “Beyond reprehensible” – The Times’ phrase in its editorial this week – is far better.

Still, Mr Mulcaire did give a context for the epidemic of hacking into confidential mobile phone and banking data that swept through Fleet Street in the 1990s and 2000s. “Working for the News of the World was never easy. There was relentless pressure. There was a constant demand for results,” he said.