London's top cops defend themselves in phone-hacking scandal

London (CNN) - London's outgoing police commissioner denied Tuesday that he put pressure on the Guardian newspaper in 2009 to drop its investigation into the News of the World phone-hacking scandal.

Commissioner Paul Stephenson said he was relying on assurances from his deputy - Assistant Commissioner John Yates - that there was nothing new in a series of 2009 Guardian articles detailing a phone-hacking scandal that was significantly more expansive than had been previously reported.

"They seemed to disagree," Stephenson said of the newspaper's editors. "So it seemed entirely appropriate ... that I meet with them and actually represent to them what I was being told, and that is that this was nothing new, and I had no reason to doubt the first inquiry," he said.

Stephenson and Yates both testified Tuesday before Parliament, on a day that also saw testimony from media baron Rupert Murdoch before another parliamentary committee. Rupert's News International subsidiary and its now-defunct News of the World newspaper are at the heart of the scandal, which has rocked the country's political, media and law enforcement establishments.