Cameron — struggling to deflect criticism that he was too cozy with editors in Rupert Murdoch’s media empire who are involved in the scandal — asked Parliament to delay its scheduled summer recess for a day to “answer any questions that may arise.”

Meanwhile, Assistant Police Commissioner John Yates, who years ago made the decision to drop the police probe of the hacking scandal, announced his resignation, one day after his boss, Sir Paul Stephenson, did the same.

Yates--once considered a candidate to run the Metropolitan Police Service, better known as Scotland Yard--had defiantly sought to hold on to his position, even after being hauled before Parliament last week for what amounted to a public humiliation.

After information emerged that he had dined with News Corp. editors while News of the World was still under investigation, calls for him to step down escalated.

“A high-ranking officer felt it acceptable to be wined and dined by senior newspaper executives under investigation,” Deputy Prime Minister Nicholas Clegg fumed Thursday. “The Met now has a big job on its hands winning back the public confidence that has been lost.”

Scotland Yard’s Senior Fraud Office will give “full consideration” to calls for it to investigate whether out-of-court settlements made to hacking victims in 2006 were illegal, a police spokeswoman told The Daily Telegraph newspaper Monday. The agency already is probing allegations that News of the World bribed police to get information.

Cameron and his government are bracing for fresh bombshells Tuesday when a host of witnesses — including Murdoch himself — is scheduled to testify before Parliament.

Also expected are Murdoch’s son, James Murdoch, who oversees News International, News Corp.’s British operation; Rebekah Brooks, the former chief executive of News International, who was arrested on Sunday and questioned for hours before being released on bail; and Stephenson, the head of the Metropolitan Police Service, who resigned Sunday to take responsibility for his force’s hiring of a different News Corp editor, Neil Wallis, as a communications consultant.

Wallis was arrested on Thursday.

Stephenson appeared to take a parting shot at Cameron in his resignation speech, suggesting that he had withheld details of the scandal probe from the prime minister because of Cameron’s own “close relationship” with Andy Coulson, his former communications chief and former editor of Murdoch’s News of the World tabloid. Coulson, too, was arrested last week.

The speech left Cameron facing uncomfortable questions Monday as to how Scotland Yard’s decision to hire Wallis — leading to Stephenson’s resignation — differed from Downing Street’s decision to hire Coulson.

Cameron, speaking to reporters in South Africa, suggested that Scotland Yard’s failures went beyond hiring decisions and involved its pursuit of the phone-hacking case. In 2003, Brooks admitted to Parliament that under her leadership, the News of the World paid police officers for information — an admission that Scotland Yard paid little heed at the time.

It was unclear whether Brooks, who was released on bail early Monday, would also appear before Parliament on Tuesday, as originally planned. Analysts said her arrest came amid speculation that she could make revelations Tuesday that might underscore major failures by Scotland Yard in connection with the scandal.

Stephenson has acknowledged that his force mishandled the criminal probe. After making just two arrests in 2006 and considering wrongdoing at the tabloid an isolated incident, officers dropped the matter. Despite revelations in 2009 by the Guardian newspaper about far wider misdeeds at News of the World, officers reopened the case only under mounting pressure this year.

“The situation in the Metropolitan Police Service is really quite different to the situation in the government,” Cameron told reporters in South Africa. “Not least because the issues that the Metropolitan Police are looking at, the issues around them, have had a direct bearing on public confidence into the police inquiry into the News of the World and indeed into the police themselves."

Stephenson maintained Sunday that his “integrity” remains intact, but he said the focus on him and other high-ranking officers had become a major distraction for Scotland Yard at a time when the 51,000-strong force is gearing up for one of its largest special operations ever — the 2012 Olympics in London.

“This is not a 12 months that can afford any doubts about the commissioner of the Met,” Stephenson said. “I have seen at first hand the distractions for this organization when the story becomes about the leaders as opposed to what we do as a service. I was always clear that I would never allow that. We the Met cannot afford this — not this year.”