Leaked emails suggest that Newsnight editor Peter Rippon played down the importance of an investigation into Jimmy Savile’s alleged child abuse, saying the victims were “teenagers, not too young” and the abuse was not the “worst kind of sexual offences”.

The BBC is investigating up to 10 “serious allegations” involving past and present employees, director general George Entwistle said today.

TORY communications chief Andy Coulson admitted yesterday that “things went badly wrong” under his editorship of the News of the World – but rejected any suggestion he knew about alleged phone-hacking by the paper’s journalists.