The vile and odious rascal Hunt insisted, of course, that he had handled the process with 'scrupulous fairness.' One or two people even believed him. A string of e-mails released by the inquiry into press standards suggested that there was a steady flow of information from the lack of culture secretary's office to News Corp advisers when the firm was bidding to take over BSkyB. Just in case Jezza his very self doesn't realise quite how deep the shit he's in at the moment is, a glance at this morning's papers might, just, give him a clue. (It's to be hoped he reads the Sun first, Fernando Torres and John Terry have pushed him onto page two, there.)
Yes. It's come to this, dear blog reader. At the same time, Rupert Murdoch will be giving his own evidence to the Leveson Inquiry, testimony which could be very uncomfortable for Cabinet ministers of both sides of the chamber past and present. In one e-mail, Fréderic Michel, head of public affairs at News Corp, told James Murdoch the small that he, Michel, had 'managed to get some information' on the vile and odious rascal Hunt's statement on the BSkyB bid to Parliament due the next day although it was, he said, with an exclamation mark and a smiley-face 'absolutely illegal.' Murdoch told an incredulous inquiry that the reference had been 'a joke.' But Labour said that the documents showed the vile and odious rascal Hunt failed to fulfil his quasi-judicial role over the BSkyB bid. Milimolimandi said: 'He should resign. He himself said that his duty was to be transparent, impartial and fair in the BSkyB takeover. But now we know that he was providing advice, guidance and privileged access to News Corporation. He was acting as a back channel for the Murdochs. He cannot stay in his post. And if he refuses to resign, the prime minister must show some leadership and fire him.' The vile and odious rascal Hunt said that he had asked Lord Justice Leveson to bring forward his own appearance at the inquiry. He had been due to give evidence along with other politicians including the prime minister in May. The vile and odious rascal Hunt said: 'Now is not a time for knee-jerk reactions.' Oh, I very much think it is, pal. 'We've heard one side of the story today but some of the evidence reported meetings and conversations that simply didn't happen. Rather than jump on a political bandwagon, we need to hear what Lord Justice Leveson thinks after he's heard all the evidence.' In June 2010, News Corp had been bidding to take over the sixty one per cent of BSkyB which it did not already own. That November, the Business Secretary Vince Cable, asked media regulator Ofcom to look at the potential impact of the deal on media plurality. Hunt took over responsibility for overseeing the BSkyB bid after Cable was stripped of the role in December 2010, having been secretly recorded by two undercover Torygraph journalists saying he had 'declared war' on Rupert Murdoch. 
Documents relating to meetings with News Corporation and the vile and odious rascal Hunt's department were simultaneously released. The Enterprise Act, and its predecessor the Fair Trading Act 1973, do not use the phrase 'quasi-judicial.' Nor do they spell out the type of contacts permissible between any secretary of state assessing public interest considerations and the business engaged in the takeover. Gardner also doubted whether 'quasi-judicial' had any actual definition in law. 'Someone could mount a [judicial] challenge based on Hunt's past views,' he said. 'We used to think [in law] there were different categories of decisions that [required] different levels of fairness. Now it's accepted that fairness is what is required in the circumstances.' One previous case that may be used as a precedent in assessing fairness, Gardner suggested, was the 2001 House of Lords decision in Porter vs Magill which set out the test 'whether the fair-minded and informed observer, having considered the facts, would conclude that there was a real possibility that the tribunal [or any decision maker] was biased.' Stephen Smith, head of competition at the corporate law firm Reynolds Porter Chamberlain, said that the minister's role in making the decision was 'not defined in any way' in the act. Any such challenge to the minister's role, he added, 'would fall back on the normal principles of law such as those involved in planning disputes.' A final decision would be open to judicial review on the standard grounds of whether it was a reasonable conclusion for a public official to reach. Whether the bid was referred to the commission may have been the vile and odious rascal Hunt's decision, Smith added, but the secretary of state would have been working closely with regulators.
Jay wondered why, Cable excepted, Murdoch was getting such help from ministers. It was obvious why the vile and odious rascal Hunt was being so helpful, surely? It was because the Sun had backed the Conservatives before the election, the barrister said, and this was pay-back. Murdoch argued differently, saying: 'I simply wouldn't make that trade. It would be inappropriate to do so and I simply don't do business that way.' Jay demonstrated that Murdoch had seemed to be unable to ask the critical questions that might have told him there was more to the phone-hacking scandal than just Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire. At the crucial meeting to agree a - massive - secret payout to settle Gordon Taylor's hacking case, Murdoch was told that Colin Myler, the Scum of the World editor, and Tom Crone, the title's chief lawyer, had already made a three hundred and fifty thousand smackers offer which had been rejected. 'Didn't you think that was an extraordinary amount of money for this sort of allegation, even if proved?' asked Jay. Murdoch said that he had no idea: 'Well, I really didn't have any way to situate that amount of money with respect to the allegation.' He gave the two men authorisation to conclude a four hundred and twenty five grand settlement, plus costs, which took the eventual total above seven hundred thousand knicker. Murdoch said the Scum of the World executives could not wait to get out of the room to make the case go away. Jay did not say it, but privacy or similar actions at that time, typically ended up in low-to-mid-five-figure payouts. The News Corp executive was later asked if he had participated in 'a cover-up' over the Taylor case, or if he didn't read his e-mails 'properly'? Faced with the difficult question, Murdoch opted to shift the blame onto Myler and Crone. He said: 'I was told sufficient information to authorise them to go and negotiate at a higher level, and I was not told sufficient information to go and turn over a whole bunch of stones that I was told had already been turned over.' 
It was part of a strategy described by allies as 'emphasising consistency' with previous statements. Murdoch struggled whenever he talked about newspapers, saying that he read the Scum of the World 'from time to time' (although, obviously, not now that it's been shut down in disgrace and ignominy) and, as for the Sun, he 'tried to familiarise' himself with 'what was in it.' So, he looked at page three and said 'gosh, look at the size of those' then. When Dominic Mohan – the only editor appointed while he was chairman of News International – got the top job at the Sun, Murdoch appeared to be a bystander in the process. He said that Mohan had been well-known Crystal Tipps lookalike Rebekah Brooks's 'strong recommendation to take the post, and in consultation with my father and Mrs Brooks, I supported the appointment.' There was some recognition for other errors made. He apologised for the Max Mosley "Nazi orgy" story, saying that Myler "had asserted that the story was both true and in the public interest, and it was later found by the court to be neither, and that was something that is a matter of great regret". But he appeared dismissive about the "ethical risks" run by the Sunday title's style of journalism. He told the inquiry that if anybody was at fault it was the editor: "I think the ethical risk was something, and the legal risk around that was something that was very much in the hands of the editor."There is, incidentally, a really good piece by the Gruniad Morning Star's Nick Davies of yesterday's extraordinary day at Leveson here: 'Critics of the Murdochs have often suspected that they have exploited their position as newspaper owners to win secret favours from governments – and the Murdochs and the politicians alike have denied it. Now, for the first time, courtesy of the volatile chain-reaction of the phone-hacking scandal, we have compelling evidence.
In one hundred and sixty three pages of paperwork published by the Leveson inquiry, we can see the dialogue between James Murdoch's camp and the office of Jeremy Hunt, the secretary of state for media, who held in his hands the outcome of the biggest deal in the history of the Murdochs' News Corporation, the eight billion pounds takeover of BSkyB. According to Tuesday's evidence, Murdoch and his lobbyist, Fred Michel, worked their way through every crack in the walls of Whitehall in search of influence and, in Hunt's office, they found friends who would supply them with information, advice and support, even as Hunt claimed to the outside world that he was being impartial and even-handed. The evidence is likely to be disputed. These are merely Michel's versions of what was said, so they are hearsay. Furthermore, Michel has told the inquiry that his messages that claimed to report conversations with Hunt were in fact based on talking to Hunt's officials, which would mean that they are also secondhand. But, if the evidence stands up, we are looking at a story of secret and improper collusion of precisely the kind that Murdoch's critics suspected.'Opposition politicians have called on Alex Salmond to 'come clean' about an apparent offer to intervene with the UK Government as part of News Corporation's bid to take over BSkyB. Labour, Tories and the Liberal Democrats in Scotland hit out at the First Minister after an e-mail from a senior figure at the company claimed Salmond would would call the lack of culture secretary the vile and odious rascal Hunt 'whenever we need him to.'
Murdoch the small, who stepped down as executive chairman of News International in February, replied: 'No, if the insinuation is that there was any quid pro quo with editorial coverage versus a commercial agenda, I can tell you categorically that it's false. There's no connection. That was absolutely not News Corporation's policy and I wouldn't do business like that.' The inquiry also heard an e-mail was sent from Michel to Murdoch on 2 March 2011, saying: 'Alex Salmond called. He had a very good dinner with the editor of the Sun in Scotland yesterday. The Sun is now keen to back the SNP at the election. The editor will make his pitch to the editorial team tomorrow. Alex wanted to see whether we could help smooth the way for the process.' A spokesman for the First Minister said later that it was 'total nonsense to suggest there was ever any quid pro quo offered by the Scottish Government over the BSkyB bid.' Salmond's spokesman later said: 'The First Minister has not corresponded with or spoken to Jeremy Hunt on the issue.' On the issue of the BSkyB takeover, the spokesman said the First Minister had not publicly given a view on the matter. He added that the First Minister could see no competition issues and that it was 'an important issue for Scotland in terms of jobs.'http://news.sky.com/home/politics/article/16215697
