Attempts have been made to find out about phone calls the McCanns made to their spokesman

KATE and Gerry McCann are furious after discovering attempts have been made to find out about phone calls they made to their spokesman, Clarence Mitchell.

Scotland Yard is trying to establish who tried to get information from Mr Mitchell's mobile phone provider, while the McCanns are checking their phone records to see if they were also targeted.

The news comes just as the pair have signed a deal for a reputed '200,000 with The Sun, the sister paper of the News of the World, to serialise a book on the disappearance of their daughter Madeleine in Portugal in 2007.

There is no suggestion anyone from Rupert Murdoch's News International has tried to use phone-hacking against Mr Mitchell. He said the first incident was in 2008, when a mystery caller claiming to be a court witness contacted Vodafone on February 29, seeking details of his phone.

Mr Mitchell said: 'The operator lists it, saying 'a gentleman called wishing to check the phone' as he gets calls each night from the number wanting information and is a 'witness on the CID trial for McCanns'. It certainly wasn't me that made that call. There was no such thing as a CID trial for the McCanns.

'That appears to be a blatant attempt to get information about whose number it was and what was happening. Thankfully, the operator didn't give them anything.'

A further call was made to Vodafone in July. Mr Mitchell said: 'Basically, it [the entry] claims the person ringing, not me, received a text message claiming that a third party had been trying to access their voicemail but there was nothing on the account showing that. That's because it isn't true, I never got such a text. Somebody else is again fishing for information.'

This week Mr Mitchell will pass his phone records to Scotland Yard. Kate and Gerry, both 42, have found nothing untoward on their phone statements, but are re-examining all their records