A senior journalist at Rupert Murdoch's News of the World allegedly paid a private investigator to hack into the computer of a former intelligence officer.

Scotland Yard has not taken any disciplinary action against officers on the original inquiry into phone hacking despite mounting evidence that they failed to follow leads and misled potential victims about the amount of information on them held by a jailed private investigator.

Sven Goran Eriksson, the former England manager, has become the latest high-profile football figure to approach Scotland Yard with concerns he was a victim of the phone-hacking scandal.

The officer in charge of the new investigation into phone hacking told one of its highest-profile possible victims that she was "not satisfied" with the original police inquiry. John Prescott, the former deputy prime minister, said that Assistant Deputy Commissioner Sue Akers had expressed her dissatisfaction of the initial inquiry during discussion of the failings that led to officers not warning him that his messages may have been illegally intercepted while he was helping to run the country.

Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, suspects that her mobile-phone voicemails were hacked by tabloid reporters.

There are many reasons why Rupert Murdoch will be alarmed at this latest development in the long-running phone hacking scandal at the fenced compound in Wapping, east London, that houses the media mogul's stable of British newspapers, News International.

With its dismissal of Ian Edmondson, News International abandoned the mantra it has chanted for four years: that phone hacking carried out by the News of the World was the work of a "rogue reporter". That was the line from January 2007, when the paper's royal editor, Clive Goodman, was jailed for illegally intercepting the royal household's messages.

Senior executive sacked as police launch new inquiry