A judge has granted the Metropolitan Police access to a journalist's phone records without their knowledge since the Save Our Sources stop-gap law was passed, a court heard yesterday. (Picture: Shutterstock)

The revelation emerged before the Investigatory Powers Tribunal yesterday as part of a hearing brought by Sun journalists who had their phone records secretly accessed by the Met as part of its Operation Alice investigation into Plebgate.

The IPT has been told that the Met accessed seven days' worth of phone records and GPRS data for political editor Tom Newton Dunn and crime reporter Anthony France in December 2012. It also accessed eight days' worth of data for political correspondent Craig Woodhouse and two hours from The Sun's newsdesk.