Leveson Inquiry: Nick Clegg gives backing to Jeremy Hunt over BSkyB

• Nick Clegg sought assurances over Jeremy Hunt

• Deputy PM gives backing to Culture Secretary over BSkyB bid

He was appearing this morning before the Leveson inquiry ahead of Alex Salmond’s evidence.

Clegg have his strongest backing yet to the Culture Secretary.

That came despite signalling last night that Mr Hunt should be subject to a sleaze probe.

Mr Clegg described frantic conversations in Whitehall last year after Business Secretary Vince Cable was secretly recorded saying he was “going to war” on Rupert Murdoch’s empire.

The Deputy PM said he sought assurances from then cabinet secretary Sir Gus O’Donnell that News Corporation’s attempt to take full control of BSkyB would be handled properly if responsibility was shifted to Mr Hunt.

“I was ready to accept the reassurances, as I did, that the process would have to be conducted in a sort of objective and quasi-judicial manner and that in one sense Jeremy Hunt’s personal views were as irrelevant as Vince Cable’s were,” Mr Clegg said.

The Lib Dem leader was asked if he still thought that had been the case, despite the emergence of close contacts between News Corp lobbyist Fred Michel and Mr Hunt’s office, and the Culture Secretary’s backing of the bid in a private letter to David Cameron.

“To be fair, they don’t actually materially add very much to, for instance, what was then already publicly known,” he replied.

Mr Clegg stressed that Parliament was separately dealing with the issue of whether Mr Hunt had breached the ministerial code.

But he added: “I think on the specific point on how he handled the bid to make sure that he was insulated from accusations of allowing personal bias to drive the process, I think he has given a full, good and convincing account to this inquiry.”

Mr Clegg gave details of an apparent warning over the BSkyB bid which was conveyed though his then parliamentary aide Norman Lamb.

The MP had been told “that it would be good for the Lib Dems to be open to the bid, otherwise we would expect no favourable treatment from the Murdoch press”, according to the Deputy Prime Minister.

“Norman was quite agitated about that,” Mr Clegg went on. “As we had not received particularly favourable treatment in the first place I did not think it was a particularly credible threat.”