A PANEL of top judges ruled yesterday that Cleveland Police acted unlawfully when it monitored the phones of Northern Echo journalists to track down a series of leaks.

Snooping officers used laws aimed at investigating serious crime and terrorism to seize phone data from three journalists, a solicitor and two police officers as it tried to find out who was leaking information to the newspaper.

And The Northern Echo has seen emails showing that then-Chief Constable Jacqui Cheer was scheduled to meet with the investigating officer on July 17 for an “update meeting”– the day after the Crown Prosecution Service ruled one of the whistleblowers had not committed a criminal offence.

That meeting was also only days before yet more authorisations were given to monitor phone records.

Mrs Cheer, who retired last March, was contacted for comment but declined.

The written judgement from the specialist court, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), has been sent to police watchdog the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) and Sir Thomas Winsor, the Chief Inspector of Constabulary, for consideration.

And Cleveland Police said yesterday it was calling in an external force to investigate the findings of the IPT judgement. The force is already reviewing six years’ worth of RIPA applications to check they are lawful.

Judges said that whatever the “subjective belief” of the force “there was no lawful basis” for obtaining the applications to seize phone records, under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), in 2012.

The sheer amount of call data seized – more than a million minutes’ worth – was excessive, they said.

Under one application, the force looked at four months’ of call records, and in total, more than a million minutes’ worth were checked, as officers tried to discover who had leaked information about an internal grievance, and about an internal report which had uncovered institutional racism within Cleveland Police.

Police should have considered that their actions went against the right to freedom of speech, enshrined in law by the European Convention of Human Rights as an essential part of democracy, when they snooped on the personal and work phones of Echo reporters Graeme Hetherington and Julia Breen.

They said Cleveland Police should have attempted to find the sources of the leaks by other means, rather than resorting to breaching privacy and freedom of speech rights by using RIPA.

RIPA is only intended to be used if police are confident that a crime has been committed – but Cleveland Police’s own evidence showed that investigating officer, Detective Inspector Tony Rock, was not even sure himself if there was a criminal offence.

His applications, signed off by the force’s current head of crime, Superintendent Peter McPhillips, were based on “no legal advice at all upon which the respondent could rely”, judges said, despite police claims that officers were acting on advice from their solicitor.

The judgement also detailed how then-Chief Constable Jacqui Cheer ordered Det Insp Rock to investigate the leak after she emailed all officers “sternly counselling them against leaks to the press”.

RIPA can be used to check data from phones and other methods of communication – but only to detect crime which stands a reasonable chance of prosecution.

Earlier this month Cleveland Police apologised for its unlawful use of RIPA and announced a major overhaul of its professional standards department, which was responsible for the investigation.

Scott Taylor, of Taylor Goodchild, Mr Matthews’ solicitor, called for a full inquiry and said: “The Judgement from the Investigatory Powers Tribunal is a damning indictment of Cleveland Police and their abuse of powers under Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, originally enacted to help protect the public and not attack the basic freedoms they enjoy.

“Abuses such as this undermine the public’s trust in such legislation. Civilians and other police officers alike need to know how widespread this abuse of those powers has been and what will be done about it. Others subjected to such unlawful abuse of powers need to be told. This case was indefensible from the outset and was at considerable cost to the public purse and to the Police Federation of England and Wales, who supported Mr Matthews throughout.”

Mr Dias said: “Cleveland Police labelled me a criminal in a deliberate attempt to smear my reputation and ostracise me from work colleagues and friends.

“There was no basis for this allegation and these venomous personal attacks continued after I departed the police service in 2013.”

He said it was a “text book case of whistleblower suppression” by the professional standards department.

An IPCC spokesman said:: “We will review the tribunal’s full report carefully before considering whether this case requires our direct involvement.”