Phone hacking: Press Association journalist arrested

A Press Association journalist has been arrested on suspicion of phone hacking.

Royal reporter Laura Elston, 34, was arrested when she attended a central London police station by appointment at 3pm this afternoon.

Scotland Yard confirmed that she was questioned by the Met's Operation Weeting team, part of a new investigation into phone hacking launched earlier this year. She was later released on bail.

Elston is the fifth person to be arrested in the course of the current investigation. The previous four have had ties to the News of the World, which has been the focus of the Operation Weeting investigation, but Elston is understood not to have worked for the newspaper.

She joined the PA as a trainee in 2000 and was made deputy royal correspondent in 2003. In 2007 she was promoted to royal correspondent.

Elston's is the second arrest within a week. Last Thursday a 39-year-old woman was arrested on suspicion of phone hacking and released without charge seven hours after her arrest.

The woman, believed to be freelance journalist and former News of the World contributor Terenia Taras, was bailed to return to a West Yorkshire police station in October, a police spokesperson confirmed.

Earlier today a high court judge ruled that a group of public figures suing News of the World publisher News Group Newspapers can have access to papers seized by the Met police from private investigator Glenn Mulcaire.

According to Scotland Yard, 11,000 pages were taken into evidence when Mulcaire was arrested in 2006.

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