Phone hacking scandal deepens

[David Guyatt]

The plot thickens.

Is it smoke filled rooms or smoked salmon and iced champagne? The result is probably the same in any case.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jan...ooks-bskyb

David Cameron met Rebekah Brooks after Vince Cable lost BSkyB power
PM visited News International chief's home over Christmas amid storm over Rupert Murdoch's bid to take full control of BSkyB

Nicholas Watt and Dan Sabbagh
The Guardian, Thursday 20 January 2011


Rebekah Brooks lives near to David Cameron's consistuency home.

David Cameron was a guest of Rebekah Brooks, the chief executive of News International, at her Oxfordshire home over the Christmas period just days after he transferred ministerial responsibility over Rupert Murdoch's bid to take full control of BSkyB.

Shortly before Christmas, Cameron stripped Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat business secretary, of his powers on media takeovers after Cable was recorded telling undercover journalists that he had "declared war" on Murdoch. Cameron handed the responsibility to the Tory culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt.

Hunt is due to decide soon whether to refer the company's bid for BSkyB to the competition commission after receiving a report by the media regulator Ofcom. News Corp is making a £7.5bn bid to buy the 61% of BSkyB it does not own.

Shadow culture secretary Ivan Lewis last night described Cameron's decision to meet Brooks as "extraordinary".

"People will question his judgment at a time when ministers are making a quasi-judicial decision about News Corp's bid for BSkyB," Lewis said. "The prime minister may be in breach of his own ministerial code, which requires openness and transparency. There is an arrogance about this prime minister that is slowly coming to the surface."

A Downing Street source played down the significance of the social engagement and pointed out that Brooks is one of the prime minister's constituents. The source said: "To suggest some kind of impropriety is laughable. The prime minister regularly meets newspaper executives from lots of different companies."

Cameron visited Brooks and her husband, the racehorse trainer and writer Charlie Brooks, at their Oxfordshire home over the Christmas period. Cameron is MP for Witney and his constituency home is near the couple's house.

The disclosure of the meeting comes as News International faces pressure over allegations of illegal phone hacking at the News of the World. Andy Coulson, Cameron's communications director, resigned as editor of the News of the World in 2007 shortly after the jailing of the paper's former royal editor, Clive Goodman, and a private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire for phone hacking. Coulson has always denied knowledge of illegal phone hacking.

Ian Edmondson, the paper's assistant editor (news), was suspended last month after the News of the World was alerted that Mulcaire would say in evidence that the executive had instructed him to hack the phone of the football agent Sky Andrew.

One senior Tory said that News International's central defence that a "rogue reporter" was responsible appeared to be crumbling. "This all appears to be closing in. It has always been obvious there were others. People just didn't know the names."

Cameron, who declined to say on the Today programme earlier this week whether Coulson had offered to resign, said that his communications director was embarrassed by the revelations. "Of course he, as anyone who is human would be, is extremely embarrassed by the endless publicity and speculation about what happened many years ago when he was editor of the News of the World. Of course he is embarrassed about that."