Paul Stephenson, London's police commissioner, quit in the face of allegations that police officers had accepted money from Murdoch's News of the World paper and had not done enough to investigate hacking charges that surfaced as far back as 2005.

The trigger for his resignation was the revelation that he had stayed at a luxury spa for which Neil Wallis, a former News of the World deputy editor, was the public relations adviser. Wallis, also employed by the police as a consultant, was arrested last week in connection with the hacking scandal.

"I had no knowledge of the extent of this disgraceful practice (of phone-hacking)," Stephenson said in a televised statement, referring to allegations that thousands of phones, including that of a murdered schoolgirl, had been hacked into.

Reuters