Former senior Met police officers have been questioned at the Leveson Inquiry over their links to News International, after it was revealed they frequently socialised with News of the World journalists.Ex-assistant commissioner John Yates, who resigned last year over a failed review of the hacking scandal, was shown to have had several dinners and private meetings with Lucy Panton, crime reporter on News of the World, and deputy editor Neil Wallis. Yates said Wallis was a close personal friend, and the pair would often go to football matches together.He added: “I absolutely know and I guarantee that none of that played any part in my decision making. My conscience is completely clear on that.”An email from News of the World news editor James Mellor to Lucy Panton shown to the court said Yates would be “crucial” to a story believed to be about a terrorist threat, adding: “really need an exclusive splash line, time to call in all those bottles of champagne”.Yates denied an improper relationship with Panton, who he said he had known for over a decade, and other News of the World employees, although admitted he probably had shared champagne with the journalist in the company of others.Several private meetings with Wallis, Panton, property developer Nick Candy and PR consultant Neil Reading, among others, were listed in Yates’s diary and hospitality register.Former Met assistant commissioner Andy Hayman was shown to have paid for a £47 bottle of champagne with his Met American Express Card. He said he could not recall whether he had been with Panton, or a colleague of hers, at the time.Hayman was questioned over a 2007 lunch with Panton and Wallis, but said he could not remember what was discussed.Robert Jay QC, inquiry counsel, said the lunch had also been paid for on his work card. He was shown to have had several other dinners and meetings with Panton, Wallis and former editor Andy Coulson.Hayman defended his column for the Times, for which he was paid £10,000 a year, following his decision to retire from the Met in 2007, but said he took the point it might create the perception of an improper relationship with News International.Earlier today, Peter Clarke, former deputy assistant commissioner -- named yesterday as the man who decided not to widen the original phone hacking inquiry -- said there had been 70 anti-terrorist operations under way in the UK around the time Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire were arrested in 2006. He told the inquiry he had to borrow police officers from forces all over the country to help terrorist threats and was unable to stretch resources to the hacking investigation.He said: “These were precious resources which I had been dragging from across the British police for a number of years. I hope that gives some context to the scale of the threat”.He later added: “Invasions of privacy are odious, distressing and illegal [but] to put to bluntly they don't kill you, terrorists do.”Clarke said Lord John Prescott should have been told his phone could have been hacked but it would not have been his responsibility to inform the then deputy prime minster. He suggested John Reid, home secretary at the time, had been briefed on the investigation.Lord Justice Leveson said he was disturbed that Yates did not know about the hacking of voicemail messages from Prescott until 2010. The former assistant commissioner said there had been an indexing problem with evidence relating to Prescott and his assistant.The judge pointed out officers had questioned Mulcaire over Prescott's phone being hacked immediately after his arrest, and that by the next day they had established the information Mulcaire had on Prescott's assistant was linked to the former Deputy Prime Minister.He added: “I am disturbed that your persistent requests didn't reveal the answer. People were bleeding over these papers for Mr Prescott for some time, but somehow this is all slipped through the cracks.”Yates told the inquiry: "I cannot tell you the amount of times I checked and sought further and better particulars about the possibility that Mr Prescott's phone had been interfered with."