THE Culture Secretary's appearance before the Leveson Inquiry yesterday did not produce the smoking gun that some observers predicted, but there was plenty of ammunition for those who argue that his handling of the BSkyB bid should cost him his job.
Given his trail of texts, memos and emails on the subject, it would be futile for Jeremy Hunt to deny his role as a cheerleader for News Corporation's £8bn takeover bid for the 61% of BSkyB not in its control. As he made clear in his evidence, he did not consider that there were insuperable media plurality issues and, like Alex Salmond, he firmly believed the deal could safeguard and generate many jobs. However, private messages between the minister and his Government colleagues on the very day he was given responsibility for deciding the bid raise serious questions about the Prime Minister's judgment in appointing him.
Mr Hunt's defence is that the moment he took on this "quasi-judicial role", he put all his previous sympathies aside and acted with "total integrity" and "scrupulous fairness" (unlike his predecessor in the role, Vince Cable, who was caught "declaring war" on the Murdoch empire by undercover reporters). We are asked to believe that at 4pm on December 21 he was lobbying George Osborne on behalf of James Murdoch but, two hours later, he was a completely neutral judge.
Mr Hunt even suggested that he had acted in ways that frustrated the bid, by consulting the regulator Ofcom and publishing its advice. He was less keen to emphasise his rejection of Ofcom's advice and pursuit of the option of spinning Sky News into an independent company to avoid a referral to the Competition Commission. It also seems implausible that the Culture Secretary realised there might by "governance issues" at News Corporation only after the Milly Dowler story broke on July 4.
As Lord Leveson has emphasised, it is not his job to decide whether Mr Hunt broke the ministerial code. It seems increasingly clear that he did. Though he largely refrained from direct contact with the Murdoch lobby after December 21 2010, he frankly admits that Adam Smith, his special adviser, remained in daily, sometimes hourly, contact via a torrent of chummy texts and emails.
As the ministerial code makes clear, ministers are directly responsible for the actions of advisers, who have no constitutional identity separate from their minister. Secondly, by failing to declare these contacts – many of them not properly minuted – to Parliament, he misled the House. Thirdly, perceptions matter and this whole business looks terrible to a British public already sceptical about the integrity of politicians. David Cameron is wrong not to refer Mr Hunt's conduct to the independent adviser on the ministerial code. To stick by him represents either misplaced loyalty or fear that it will leave this mess where it might well belong: on the doorstep of Number 10.
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