The 'News of the World', a widely circulated Sunday tabloid, may face a multi-million pound legal action from a dozen high-profile personalities following allegations that their phones were hacked by its journalists.

Graham Shear, a partner at law firm Teacher Stern, told The Daily Telegraph that a number of his clients including actors, sports stars and politicians were now considering legal action against the paper.

Mark Stevens, a media lawyer, said he had been contacted by many people asking whether they could sue.

The Information Commissioner's Office said it had handed over the evidence to police in 2006 that 31 journalists from the 'News of the World' and its sister paper 'The Sun' had bought and sold illegally obtained personal information.

John Yates, Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, said that senior officers were confident that all those people targeted had been made aware of the compromise to their security.

"In the vast majority of cases there was insufficient evidence to show that tapping had actually been achieved.

There was no evidence that the phone of John Prescott, former deputy prime minister, had been tapped," Yates said.

The tabloid is said to have paid more than one million pounds in out-of-court settlements following the prosecution of Clive Goodman, the newspaper's former royal editor, and Glenn Mulcaire, a private investigator. They were jailed for hacking into the phone messages of aides to the Royal family two years ago.

Mulcaire admitted in the trial that he also tapped the phones of model Elle Macpherson, MP Simon Hughes, publicist Max Clifford and Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the Professional Footballers' Association. Hundreds more may have been targeted, the report said.

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