Hacking probe cost me my marriage - Tom Watson MP

Investigating tabloid newspaper phone hacking has cost deputy Labour party chairman Tom Watson his marriage, the West Bromwich East MP revealed today.

He has confirmed that his 11-year marriage to his former trade union colleague Siobhan was over and blamed the "pressure" of the inquiry, which he has worked on for three years.

Mr Watson discussed the breakdown of his marriage after writing a book with journalist Martin Hickman about the practices of Rupert Murdoch's News International newspapers.

Dial M For Murdoch will be released tomorrow and gives Mr Watson's account of how the company, which published the now defunct News of the World, hacked the mobile phones of celebrities and victims of crime, including the murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler.

Mr Watson, who was elected in 2001, told the Express & Star: "I'm very sad to admit the failure of my marriage. I tried my very best to hold things together but the pressure of the hacking scandal inquiry has taken its toll."

He said no one else had been involved. However he said "aggressive" media intrusion into his life had led to problems in the relationship. The couple have two children, a boy and a girl aged six and three.

Mr Watson was made deputy chairman of the Labour party last year by Ed Miliband with responsibility for campaigns.

Mrs Watson used to work for her husband as an office manager at his constituency office, Terry Duffy House in West Bromwich, but the couple met when they worked for the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union, which later became Unite.

Mr Watson was put under intense pressure by tabloid newspapers in 2009 when he was wrongly accused of being involved in a campaign set up by civil servant Damian McBride to smear Conservative MPs online using made up rumours. He protested his innocence, sued the Daily Mail and The Sun and won substantial damages.

Mr Watson's book thanks Express & Star columnist Peter Rhodes, who interviewed Mr Watson at the height of the McBride scandal and let him set the record straight.

Mr Watson said: "The most emotional week of my life was back in 2009. The Sun viciously libelled me. It remains a great sense of pride that my own paper – the Express & Star – took a different view."

Mr Watson emerged as the leading light in exposing the scale of practices at publisher News International, which initially insisted that phone hacking was down to one "rogue reporter".

He has spent three years working to uncover the scandal. Last year he received an apology from James Murdoch, then executive chairman of News International, after it was revealed the firm had followed him using a private detective.

* Dial M For Murdoch is released tomorrow priced £20.