Full Met Police statement on level of response to hacking and illegal payment inquiries: The linked Operations Weeting, Elveden and Tuleta are extremely difficult and complex with literally millions of pieces of documentation needing to be scrutinised and examined.

Given the seriousness of the allegations currently under investigation and the significant number of victims, the MPS does not believe that the level of resources devoted to the three inquiries is in any way disproportionate to the enormous task in hand.

There are 169 officers and staff currently deployed to the three linked investigations. Of these, 91 officers and staff are deployed to Operation Weeting; 61 to Operation Elveden; and 16 to Operation Tuleta with a Detective Chief Superintendent overseeing the three investigations. These resources are constantly reviewed and where they relate to corrupt payments to police officers the IPCC have oversight.

The majority have come from Specialist Crime; Territorial Policing and the Directorate of Professional Standards. At no stage has any major investigation been compromised as a result of these deployments.

Saturday's Operation Elveden arrests were as a result of information provided to officers by News Corporation's Management Standards Committee.

We would like to make it clear that no more than ten MPS officers attended each of the home addresses of the persons arrested as part of Operation Elveden on Saturday, 11 February. It should be noted that several officers are needed for the thorough and efficient search of an address, including, where appropriate, specialist search teams.

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