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The law firm had said it was being prevented from responding to "inaccurate" comments made by News International chairman James Murdoch because the company would not allow it breach its duty of client confidentiality. During Wednesday's House of Commons debate on the phone-hacking scandal, MPs called on News International to publish the full exchanges about e-mails examined by the legal firm. "The overall requirement is $1.6bn (�990m) for Somalia, roughly $300m is needed in the next two months to provide an adequate response to famine-affected areas. Children and adults are dying at an appalling rate," Mr Ban said. News International's parent company News Corporation has also confirmed it has stopped paying the legal fees of former private detective Glenn Mulcaire, who was convicted of phone hacking on behalf of the News of the World in 2007. He said the goal was to save lives, "not to play a game of 'gotcha' with a UN agency or any other group that is brave enough to go in and provide that assistance". The UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs for Somalia said the ongoing conflict in Somalia had made it extremely difficult for agencies to access communities in the south, which are controlled by al-Shabab. Downing Street and Buckingham Palace denied claims by Labour MP Chris Bryant that royal officials raised concerns about Mr Coulson's appointment

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He said the goal was to save lives, "not to play a game of 'gotcha' with a UN agency or any other group that is brave enough to go in and provide that assistance". Nearly half the Somali population - 3.7 million people - were in crisis, he said, with most of them in the south. In other developments in the phone-hacking saga: that they can operate unfettered," Mr Steinberg told the BBC.

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He said discussions with al-Shabab about the safe distribution of food aid were taking place at a local level, and that responses were expected to differ depending on the locality. that they can operate unfettered," Mr Steinberg told the BBC. Downing Street confirms that the prime minister received and responded to a letter from Labour MP Tom Watson last October, in which he had raised concerns about Mr Coulson She said the US had already provided $431m this year in emergency aid to the Horn of Africa, but that was "not enough".

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UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said new funds to help the country were desperately needed. Al-Shabab, an al-Qaeda-affiliated group which controls large swathes of south and central Somalia, had imposed a ban on foreign aid agencies in its territories in 2009, but has recently allowed limited access. Prime Minister David Cameron told MPs that "with hindsight" he would not have hired ex-News of the World editor Andy Coulson as his communications chief, in the closest he has come to an apology. News International has said a May 2007 letter from the firm had made it believe that hacking was a "matter of the past" and confined to a single rogue reporter.

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Save the Children's Sonia Zambakides told the BBC the situation in Somalia was shocking. She said the US had already provided $431m this year in emergency aid to the Horn of Africa, but that was "not enough". Families have built their own homes at the camp with tree branches, wood and plastic sheets, he says. The law firm had said it was being prevented from responding to "inaccurate" comments made by News International chairman James Murdoch because the company would not allow it breach its duty of client confidentiality. The UN has declared a famine in two areas of southern Somalia as the region experiences the worst drought in more than half a century.