Cameron: Hunt appointment to BSkyB case was not a 'botched' decision

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jun/14/leveson-cameron-defends-hunt-bskyb

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David Cameron insisted he did not make a "rushed" or "botched" decision to hand responsibility for News Corp's BSkyB bid to culture secretary Jeremy Hunt after he stripped business secretary Vince Cable of the role.

But the Leveson inquiry heard how the prime minister and other officials discussed detailed legal evidence from government lawyers justifying the decision to give Hunt the role long after he had taken the baton from Cable.

Cameron says he remembers hearing that Cable had been secretly recorded saying that he was "declaring war" on Murdoch at about 3pm on 21 December 2010. At 4pm, a meeting was convened to discuss the matter, which was attended by chancellor George Osborne, the permanent secretary to No 10 and the cabinet secretary, among others.

Earlier evidence to Leveson, submitted by Hunt and Osborne, shows that the meeting broke up just before 5pm when the chancellor then discovered two texts from Hunt, desperately seeking contact with him. One, timed 4.08pm, read: "Could we chat about Murdoch Sky bid? Am seriously worried we are going to screw this up."

Osborne replied at 4.58pm: "I hope you like our solution."

Hunt's evidence is that at that point he was aware he was going to be handed the key job. So, the decision was made, but Cameron's evidence laid bare the frantic calls and email exchanges that ensued the meeting to provide the legal cover for the appointment.

Concerns had been raised in the meeting that just as Cable's anti-Murdoch remarks had disqualified him from being in charge of the BSkyB bid, so too might Hunt's pro-Murdoch remarks in a Financial Times article earlier that year.

At 4.55pm Cameron had a meeting with the cabinet secretary who said they should get "rapid legal advice" on the FT article. At 5.24pm the legal director of the department of culture media and sport sent an email saying his remarks were "not helpful and tends towards an element of pre-judging". Further advice was given, over the phone by Paul Jenkins, the government solicitor between "4.30pm and 5.30pm". Cameron revealed that Hunt's remarks did not present a "legal impediment".

This was not formally noted until the following day in a memo from the then cabinet secretary Gus O'Donnell.

At 5.45pm, Hunt's appointment was announced. Cameron admits there may have been some haste but denies it was the wrong decision.

"The haste was it was 3pm. The business secretary had said something which couldn't stand," Cameron said.

"In this 24-hour news environment, you cannot just spend hours or half days working out what you are going to do next."

But he added: "It was not some rushed, botched political decision."

Cameron was also quizzed about a memo Hunt had sent him in November warning that if the BSkyB bid didn't go through, the media sector would suffer for years. He dismissed suggestions that the strongly worded note was clear evidence of pro-Murdoch bias and told the inquiry, that in any case, he hadn't read it. Even if he had, he would have still arrived at the same conclusion.

"I'm quite clear that my advice to Sir Gus would not have been any different had I seen the note at the time," Cameron said. When pressed on the matter by Leveson, he conceded that it did, however, raise questions about putting a minister in charge of such a key decision "who had his own views, who has developed his own policy".