Leveson: Jeremy Hunt went for drink with adviser then sacked him next day

CULTURE Secretary Jeremy Hunt told his special adviser to quit after highly damaging emails revealing the close relationship between his department and the Murdoch empire were released, the former aide said.

• Adam Smith was initially told his job was safe by Jeremy Hunt after leak

• Former adviser admitted tone of correspondence with News Corp lobbyist Fred Michel was ‘inapproriate’

• Mr Michel had written to News Corp colleagues after talks with adviser suggesting that it was ‘almost game over for the opposition [of the BSkyB takeover bid]’

Adam Smith told the Leveson Inquiry that the minister had reassured him that he had only been doing his job and not to worry on the evening the documents were published.

But the following day Mr Hunt spent the morning in meetings before calling in Mr Smith and telling him everyone “thinks you need to go”, he said.

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister has been forced to defend his decision to give Mr Hunt responsibility for the decision on News Corporation’s takeover of BSkyB, after it emerged the minister sent him a memo arguing the case for the bid just weeks beforehand. David Cameron insisted he acted “impartially” once he was responsible for the decision. “I don’t regret giving the job to Jeremy Hunt. It was the right thing to do in the circumstances, which were not of my making,” he said.

The inquiry heard yesterday that, after the e-mails were published, Mr Smith told the Culture Secretary that if the pressure became so great that it would help if he resigned he would “not hesitate to do so”.

He said he could not remember verbatim what Mr Hunt had said in response. “It was something along the line ‘it won’t come to that’,” he added.

Mr Smith told his boss the e-mails were one-sided and “in many cases exaggerated” and Mr Hunt accepted the explanation.

The pair then went for a drink with other special advisers in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and he was told not to worry. Mr Smith said the following day he was “aware Mr Hunt was having meetings and I was not present”.

Asked what Mr Hunt said to him, he replied: “To the best of my recollection, ‘everyone here thinks you need to go’ was what he said.” Mr Smith was warned that James Murdoch’s evidence to the inquiry might be relevant to him, and so watched the 24 April session on TV.

“My initial reaction was that the evidence that had been presented was not the whole picture, that there was a great deal of exaggeration in [senior News Corporation lobbyist] Fred Michel’s e-mails and that there were in fact relatively few e-mails from me to Mr Michel,” he said.

Last night, pressure was building on Mr Smith’s former boss and the Prime Minister.

Deputy Labour leader Harriet Harman said: “David Cameron might think that he can brazenly say ‘no regrets’ and this will somehow draw a line under it, but people will not accept that. It was evident that he gave the decision on the Murdoch bid to Jeremy Hunt when he knew Jeremy Hunt was not impartially judging the bid, but was in favour of the bid.”

l A News International journalist has been arrested as part of Scotland Yard’s inquiry into payments to public officials. The 37-year-old became the 30th suspect in the Operation Elveden investigation.