Simon Hughes, a senior British politician who was outed by a major newspaper, was paid out over AU$65,000 by News International last month. The British MP is one of the latest victims to successfully sue the media empire for phone hacking. In 2006, Hughes was a front runner for the leadership of the Liberal Democrats Party before The Sun newspaper ran a story with the headline: ‘Hughes: I’ve had gay sex’. Hughes had been approached by a journalist then who used phone records supposedly gathered by phone hacking to legitimise his allegations. Hughes told the current Leveson media inquiry that in 2006 he was experiencing problems with his voicemail that he did not realise were due to phone hacking.