David Cameron has come under strong pressure to sack Andy Coulson after fresh allegations emerged today of illegal phone tapping while the Tory communications chief was editor of the News of the World.

Les Hinton, the former executive chairman of News International, has been called back from the United States to give evidence to a parliamentary select committee about the activities of News of the World journalists, and what executives may have known about it, after revelations in The Guardian newspaper this morning.

The Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police has ordered an urgent review of his detectives' original criminal investigation, which resulted in the News of the World's royal editor Clive Goodman being jailed for four months for accessing the phones of three royal aides but which appeared to exonerate other reporters and executives on the paper.

The Guardian claimed today that the bugging had been on a much grander scale, with the voice mailboxes of hundreds of public figures being tapped.

John Prescott, then Deputy Prime Minister, Tessa Jowell, a Cabinet Minister, Boris Johnson, then a Conservative MP, the actress Gwyneth Paltrow and Elle Macpherson, the lingerie tycoon and former supermodel, were all named as victims.

The Guardian claimed that News International, the parent company of the News of the World and also The Times, had paid out more than £1 million to settle three separate legal actions by people whose privacy had been breached, including £700,000 to Gordon Taylor, the chief executive of the Professional Footballers' Association.

The newspaper alleged that the Metropolitan Police had been aware that many phones had been tapped, but that it failed to alert the victims or to open further criminal investigations.

Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, led the demands for Mr Cameron to dismiss Mr Coulson from his post.

Mr Huhne told the Commons that at best Mr Coulson had been responsible for a newspaper that was out of control and at worst he was personally implicated.

“Either way, a future prime minister cannot have someone who is involved in these sort of underhand tactics," said Mr Huhne.

"The exact parallel is with Damian McBride (the Labour spin doctor who quit over alleged dirty tricks). If it is more than a thousand [phone taps] it seems most unlikely to me to have been just one journalist. There needs to be a full investigation.”

Early this morning Mr Cameron was still defending Mr Coulson, telling reporters that "yes, of course" his job was safe.

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