LONDON: British Prime Minister David Cameron stands by a pledge to make "a profound apology" after his former media chief Andy Coulson was found guilty of being part of a phone-hacking conspiracy, the British leader's spokesman said on Tuesday.
Political opponents have long questioned Cameron's judgment in hiring Coulson in 2007 after he resigned the editorship of Rupert Murdoch's now defunct News of the World newspaper when two of its employees were jailed for phone-hacking.
Coulson denied wrongdoing at the time, but Ed Miliband, the leader of the opposition Labour party, said in 2011 it was "a catastrophic error of judgment" for Cameron to have hired Coulson and demanded he apologise for doing so.
Even some of Cameron's allies at the time warned him against collaborating with Coulson as lurid news stories about the tabloid newspaper he used to run circulated.
Cameron told parliament in 2011 he would make an apology if it turned out that Coulson had lied to him and did know about phone hacking.
When asked on Tuesday whether Cameron was standing by his pledge to apologise, a spokesman for Cameron told reporters: "The prime minister's words as given to parliament stand entirely."
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