http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/may/24/jeremy-hunt-minister-murdoch-editorial
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If this module of the Leveson inquiry has a smoking gun, it is the memo Jeremy Hunt wrote to the prime minister on 19 November 2010. Mr Hunt, as culture secretary, was not in charge of the News Corp BSkyB bid at the time – Vince Cable was – and Hunt's officials were emphatic that he should keep his nose out of it. He was forced to cancel a planned meeting with News Corp – instead arranging a mobile phone conversation with James Murdoch.
There are three obvious questions that flow from this new evidence. The first – for Mr Hunt – is why he so recklessly defied the advice of his officials to intervene with Downing Street over a matter in which he not only had no role, but had been positively warned to stay clear of. The paperwork turned over to Leveson clearly shows Hunt's bias towards the bid before he assumed responsibility for it. He showed virtually no interest in the counter-arguments once he was running the process and will have to explain the voluminous insider back-channel contacts between his office and News Corp.
News Corp must answer questions about the "son of Wapping" plan that has now been revealed by the memo. Throughout the bid its executives denied any plans to bundle together its newspapers, digital and TV offerings, companies, platforms and content. Sometimes it suited News Corp to claim that Sky was an entirely separate company. At others the argument was reversed (and duly adopted by Mr Hunt): Sky was controlled by News Corp, anyway, so there was no real proposed change of control. But it now seems apparent that there was, indeed, a well-advanced plan to bring the Murdoch platforms and content into one unity. Leveson should ask to see those plans.
Finally, there are ever-more delicate questions for Mr Cameron. Why, knowing that Mr Hunt was privately lobbying on behalf of the bid, did he think it was appropriate to appoint him to run it, given that Mr Cable – with different sympathies – had just been forced to step down over the appearance of partiality? And what is he going to do about Mr Hunt, who is due to give evidence to the inquiry next week? Mr Hunt has been shown to have defied his officials' advice and to have run the bid (under the ministerial code he has to take responsibility for Mr Smith) against a background of clandestine contacts having made his own position clear in advance. Had it not been for the Leveson inquiry we would have been kept in the dark about what went on. We are, daily, getting a fuller picture, and it is not an edifying one.
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