Watchdogs 'must look at News Corp'

Media watchdogs should consider “very seriously” whether News Corporation remains a fit and proper organisation to run satellite TV company BSkyB, The UK's Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said today.

In an end-of-term press conference in Westminster, Mr Clegg said Ofcom should apply the test “on an ongoing basis” to ensure that companies remain fit to hold broadcasting licenses.

The Deputy Prime Minister said the phone-hacking scandal had uncovered “murky practices and dodgy relationships” at the heart of Britain’s establishment, and said Lord Justice Leveson’s inquiry provided a “once-in-a-generation” opportunity to clean up the media, politics and the police.

He offered his support to David Cameron, after it emerged that the Prime Minister discussed News Corp’s bid to take over BSkyB in private meetings with executives including chairman Rupert Murdoch and former News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks.

Mr Clegg said Mr Cameron’s assurances in the House of Commons yesterday that the discussions on BSkyB were not “inappropriate” and that he did not act as a conduit between News Corp and Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt “speak for themselves”.

But he stressed that he did not attend the PM’s meetings with News Corp executives and that he led the way in Government in calling for a judge-led inquiry into the hacking claims and for Mr Murdoch to drop the BSkyB bid, as he later did.

Ofcom had confirmed it had the power “to judge whether a media group is fit and proper or not” to hold a broadcasting licence, said Mr Clegg, adding: “I very much hope that they will show by their actions that they are taking that very seriously.

“There needs to be evidence quickly that the fitness and properness is applied on an ongoing basis to News International and other media organisations.”

Speaking after days in which the headlines have been dominated by Mr Murdoch’s dramatic appearance before MPs and Mr Cameron’s lengthy statement to Parliament, Mr Clegg sought to carve out a distinctive position for the Lib Dems in the hacking row.

Lib Dems came at the issue from “completely different directions” from Conservatives and had a record going back to before the general election of calling for a hacking inquiry and demanding new rules to ensure media pluralism, he said.

Mr Clegg also confirmed that he had questioned Mr Cameron’s decision to appoint former News of the World editor Andy Coulson as Downing Street director of communications after the election.

He stressed that it was Mr Cameron’s decision alone to take his media adviser - who quit in January and was later arrested by police investigating the hacking allegations – into the heart of government.

“He has been very frank and candid about the fact that he takes responsibility for it,” said Mr Clegg. “In the same way that I take responsibility for appointments in my team, he takes responsibility for appointments to his team.”

It was confirmed today that Mr Coulson did not have the highest level of security vetting before taking up his Downing Street job.

Unlike Tony Blair’s communications chief Alastair Campbell, who had top-level clearance, Mr Coulson was subjected only to a lower level of vetting, which meant he was not permitted to view the most secret Government files.

Labour backbencher Nick Raynsford today said he would seek a meeting with Mr Cameron over claims that a senior civil servant’s phone was hacked while Mr Coulson was employed in Downing Street.

The Cabinet Office firmly denied the claim, made by the Greenwich and Woolwich MP in the House of Commons yesterday. A spokesman said “no allegations of illegal phone hacking or covert surveillance were raised with the Cabinet Secretary”.

But Mr Raynsford told the Press Association that the individual concerned “held a very senior position in the civil service” and had been “deeply shocked” to learn of the eavesdropping.

He said: “The key complaints were that he was subjected to, in my view, disgraceful, probably illegal actions during the period about a year ago in which Andy Coulson was in charge of Government communications.”

Labour leader Ed Miliband today said that recent events had shaken ordinary members of the public because they showed “irresponsibility among the powerful in our society”.

Speaking in Birmingham, Mr Miliband said the phone-hacking scandal “requires us to look into our soul as a country and say ’What standards do we want set?”’

Shadow chancellor Ed Balls said Mr Cameron had made “a catastrophic error of judgment” by discussing the BSkyB bid with News Corp executives at a time when it was being discussed by his Government.

It was “fine” for ministers to meet newspaper editors and proprietors to discuss the state of the nation and their Government’s policies, said Mr Balls.

But he told Sky News: “That is a completely different issue from Government ministers who have a power to influence commercial decisions talking directly to executives who stand to benefit from those commercial decisions.”

Meanwhile, there was speculation that private News International emails may be on the verge of being released, after a Twitter announcement apparently from hacking group LulzSec stated: “We’re currently working with certain media outlets who have been granted exclusive access to some of the News of the World emails we have.”

The group of anonymous activists claimed earlier this week to have obtained large numbers of emails in an attack on The Sun’s servers.