Prime minister denies it was inappropriate to dine with News Corp bosses while government was considering BSkyB deal
The prime minister, David Cameron, has denied that it was inappropriate for him to have dinner at the home of senior News Corporation executive Rebekah Brooks while the government was considering the company's takeover bid for BSkyB.
Cameron said Brooks, the chief executive of News Corp's UK newspaper publisher News International, was "married to a very old friend of mine" ? a reference to her husband, Charlie Brooks, the racehorse trainer and writer. Both attended Eton.
He added that party leaders and prime ministers "have lunches and dinners with editors, journalists and proprietors all of the time" and he did not think "there's a problem at all" with him attending the dinner.
Cameron was quizzed about the dinner at the Oxfordshire home of the Brooks over the Christmas period on BBC Radio 4's Today programme on Tuesday by presenter John Humphrys.
The dinner was also attended by James Murdoch, the News Corp chairman and chief executive for Europe and Asia, and took place while the culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, was considering whether to refer the company's bid to acquire the 61% of Sky it did not already own to the Competition Commission on public interest grounds.
It took place a few days after Cameron had stripped the business secretary, Vince Cable, of responsibility for media takeovers and given the powers to Hunt. Cable had been secretly taped by Daily Telegraph journalists saying that he was "at war" with Rupert Murdoch, the News Corp chairman and chief executive.
Humphrys said a lot of people thought attending the dinner was inappropriate and asked Cameron if he wished he had not done it.
"No. I've had absolutely nothing to do with the merger proposals that were put forward," Cameron replied. "I deliberately excluded myself from any part of that decision-making process. The first I knew of [Hunt's decision] was when the results were announced on the BBC.
"Jeremy Hunt had a quasi-judicial role to carry out, which he carried out in my view entirely properly, and it's quite right that he didn't consult the prime minister over that. He looked at the evidence and he made the decision and so I don't think there's a problem at all.
"Party leaders and prime ministers have lunches and dinners with editors, journalists proprietors all of the time."
Pressed further by Humphrys, he said: "The person in question is married to a very old friend of mine. I even occasionally meet people who work for the Guardian, or the Independent, or the BBC, or whatever."
Cameron was also asked about his comments last month that parliament and not the courts should decide where the right to privacy begins, in response to the rash of celebrities taking out injunctions to prevent media coverage of their private lives.
The prime minister said "we should have a discussion and a debate" about the issue, but shied away from backing a new privacy law, suggesting that more could be done through the newspaper industry's self-regulatory body, the Press Complaints Commission.
"I think we should discuss what is the right way forward. I sense that there's still more to be done to recognise that actually the Press Complaints Commission has come on a lot in recent years and we should be working with that organisation to make sure that people get the sort of protection they need, while still having a free and vibrant press," Cameron added.
"We don't want statutory regulation of the press. By all means let's debate it," he said. "But I think there's still more to be done through the Press Complaints Commission."
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Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/may/03/rebekah-brooks-dinner-david-cameron
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