Hunt aide told News Corp of license fee deal

Jeremy Hunt’s closest adviser leaked information to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp about how much the government was going to charge viewers for the television license fee, evidence submitted to the Leveson inquiry shows.

As the culture secretary prepares to testify at the inquiry on May 31 about whether he had too close a relationship with the media company, a revealing new set of emails has emerged. They show Adam Smith, Hunt’s former special adviser, telling Frédéric Michel, a lobbyist working for News Corp, that the license fee settlement would be frozen until 2017. The email was sent on October 19 2010, a day before George Osborne, the chancellor, formally announced the decision as part of a spending review. The decision was one of significant commercial interest to News Corp. Murdoch and his company’s executives have repeatedly complained that the license fee-funded BBC is too large and well-financed to allow competitors to flourish.