British PM under renewed pressure over Murdoch links

Prime Minister David Cameron was under renewed pressure yesterday from Britain’s phone-hacking scandal after it emerged he discussed Rupert Murdoch’s failed bid for BSkyB with the mogul’s executives.

A day after admitting to lawmakers that he regretted hiring an ex-editor of a Murdoch paper as his media chief, the Conservative leader faced new damaging questions about his links to the tycoon’s empire.

Mr Murdoch, who flew out of Britain on Wednesday after a turbulent 11-day visit, was forced to abandon his bid to take full control of British pay-TV giant BSkyB earlier this month as the phone-hacking scandal escalated.

The scandal forced the closure of his News of the World tabloid and a string of arrests and resignations.

After Mr Cameron admitted in a stormy session of Parliament that he did talk to Mr Murdoch’s executives over the BSkyB deal, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg was forced to defend him on Thursday.

“He has been very categorical that no inappropriate discussions took place,” Mr Clegg told reporters at a London press conference.

“And more importantly still... he played no role, could play no role, didn’t play (a) role in the actual formal decision making process itself.”

Culture Minister Jeremy Hunt, who was responsible for making the final decision on whether the deal would go through, had also insisted on Wednesday that Mr Cameron’s discussions on the BSkyB deal were “irrelevant”.

“They were irrelevant because the person who had the responsibility... the person who was making this decision was myself,” he said.

The revelation ramped up pressure on the Prime Minister following the arrest on July 8 of his ex-communications director Andy Coulson on suspicion of involvement in phone hacking and bribing police. Mr Coulson was News of the World editor but resigned in 2007 after the paper’s royal editor and a private investigator were jailed for hacking phones, although he denied knowing the practice was taking place on his watch.

He quit Downing Street in January as new evidence of hacking emerged.