Was the Milly Dowler voicemail deletion story dodgy ?

This post has been cross-posted at Harry's Place

Oops - looks like the Guardian might have got rather an important story a bit wrong, see here from the Leveson enquiry today :

3.17pm: Garnham says it does not know how the Guardian came to report in July that "Met officers have approached Surrey police and taken formal statements from some of those involved in the original inquiry, who were concerned about how News of the World journalists intercepted – and deleted – the voicemail messages of Milly Dowler".

3.06pm: Neil Garnham QC, for the Metropolitan police, is now reading a statement about the latest evidence concerning the hacking of Milly Dowler's phone.

 So the police have basically denied most of the story that started this whole media frenzy.

Meanwhile Nick Davies has got in his mea culpa (sort of) here. But the Telegraph has a different view on that :

 But it emerged at the weekend that Surrey Police now believe that Glenn Mulcaire, the private detective used by the tabloid, could not have deleted the messages as he was only commissioned later.
The new disclosure was reported in The Guardian on Saturday and online late on Friday evening.

But the headline and opening paragraph made no mention of the climb-down.
It reported instead that “fresh details” had emerged and confirmed that the voicemail was hacked.

The fact that the deletion which gave the family false hope – and ultimately caused a national scandal – might not have been the fault of the News of the World did not appear until the third paragraph.

Critics accused The Guardian of burying the story.

Oh dear. I bet Nick Davies won't be getting many Christmas cards from NI folk this year.