Under-fire Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt had agreed to hand the Leveson Inquiry all private texts and emails sent to special adviser Adam Smith amid the ongoing controversy surrounding News Corp‘s scuppered bid to takeover BSkyB.
“I will be handing over all my private texts and emails to my special adviser to the Leveson Inquiry and I am confident that they will vindicate the position that I handled the BSkyB merger process with total integrity,” Hunt told reporters this morning.
The announcement comes after Hunt yesterday rejected repeated calls for his resignation from Labour and insisted he had behaved with “scrupulous fairness” throughout the failed News Corp bid.
On Wednesday his special adviser Adam Smith quit after admitting his activities during the News Corp bid ‘went too far”. Emails released by News Corp on Tuesday appeared to show ‘back-channel’communications between Hunt’s office and News Corp throughout its attempts to buy the remaining shares in BSkyB that it did not already own.
Hunt is potentially facing three investigations from the Leveson Inquiry, the Financial Services Authority and claims he broke the Ministerial Code of Conduct
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