Senior police officers are alleged to have routinely ordered the bugging of category A prisoner’s meetings with lawyers and other visitors in prisons across the country.

The mere recording of a legally privileged conversation could be enough to render any conviction unsafe. Hundreds of prisoners may have to be retried by the courts. Meaning hundreds of victims and families could have old wounds reopened, witnesses having to face aggressive cross-examination again and legal costs running into tens of millions of pounds.

Chris Huhne is absolutely right to order a full inquiry into what could be a fundamental and rudimentary failure of police intelligence (in more ways than one), a failure with far reaching operational and political consequences.