Jeremy Hunt to hand over Sky bid correspondence
Published Apr 27 2012, 10:17 BST | By Andrew Laughlin
© Rex Features
The culture secretary told BBC News that the emails and texts would "vindicate" his claim that he acted with "total integrity" during the merger review process.
But several Liberal Democrats have called for a specific inquiry into whether Hunt breached the ministerial code of conduct.
Smith resigned on Wednesday after admitting that he went "too far" in contact with a News Corp lobbyist during the the firm's bid to take full control of Sky during 2010 and 2011.
However, he said that he had acted without the knowledge of the secretary of state, and insisted that Hunt acted with "scrupulous fairness" during the bid review.
After resisting calls to resign over the controversy, Hunt said today: "I will be handing over all my private texts and emails to my special adviser to the Leveson inquiry and I am confident they will vindicate that I handled the BSkyB merger process with total propriety."
The culture secretary has faced growing pressure to stand down since the Leveson Inquiry published more than 160 pages of emails between News Corp's European public affairs director, Frédéric Michel, and his boss James Murdoch.
The correspondence appeared to suggest extensive contact between Hunt's office and News Corp during the firm's £8bn bid to acquire the 60.9% of Sky it did not already own. This contact continued after Hunt took on a "quasi judicial" role in deciding on the takeover.
Last night, Liberal Democrat deputy leader Simon Hughes said on BBC One's Question Time that he could not understand why the prime minister had not referred the situation for review under the ministerial code of conduct.
Downing Street has given no indication whether this will happen.
An online protest petition on the Avaaz website has attracted almost 50,000 signatures, calling on Cameron to "remove Jeremy Hunt from office immediately" over his alleged "collusion with the Murdochs over the BSkyB deal [which] has brought the government into disrepute".
It is highly unlikely that Hunt will hand over all of the incriminating texts and emails. Most of these will have been long deleted by the slimy Hunt. And what about his private email accounts, phone calls and Texts to the Murdochs and their army of lobbyists? Cameron now believes that he and his Ministers are above the Ministerial code and have no case to answer.
A full investigation should be ordered immediately. No excuses from these Posh Boys and Murdoch surrogates who now run Britain.
Jeremy Hunt is a Murdoch stooge and lapdog. He is described by the Daily Mail as " Minister for Murdoch". He attacked the BBC non stop and was instrumental in making the Tory Media policies identical to those of News Corporation - Hunt agreed to dismantle the BBC Trust, reduce the powers of regulator OFCOM, strip the Competition Authorities from any role in Murdoch's bid to take full control of BSKYB, freeze the BBC Licence fee while permitting SKY TV to charge extravagant prices to consumers.
Hunt briefed James Murdoch and Rebakah Brooks and represented their views at all times.
Hunt is a creep and a liar.
Hunt in 2010 :
" Rather than worry about Rupert Murdoch owning another TV channel, what we should recognise is that he has probably done more to create variety and choice in British TV than any other single person because of his huge investment in setting up Sky TV which, at one point, was losing several million pounds a day.
We would be the poorer and wouldn't be saying that British TV is the envy of the world if it hadn't been for him being prepared to take that commercial risk. We need to encourage that kind of investment ".
April 27th 2012 at 5:14pm