Revealed: Murdoch staff for Hunt’s firm Company recruited on eve of BSKYB bid
£20k executive role with Culture Secretary’s private firm filled after help from mogul’s agency Job drive began just three weeks before crucial TV bid – and Labour MP demands investigation
LABOUR called for an investigation last night after it was revealed that a company owned by Rupert Murdoch helped recruit a £20,000-a-year executive – for a firm owned by Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt.
Milkround, a recruitment firm set up by Mr Murdoch’s News International, placed an advert for two positions in the Murdoch-owned Times newspaper last year – three weeks before Mr Hunt decided not to refer to a competition watchdog the media magnate’s bid to take over BSkyB.
The advert was for two jobs at Hotcourses, a web-based educational publishing company set up by Mr Hunt. The Culture Secretary is now fighting for Cabinet survival after damaging disclosures at the Leveson Inquiry into media ethics about his cosy links with ex-News International boss James Murdoch.
Labour frontbencher Chris Bryant said: ‘This needs investigating. There are so many fishy elements to the Jeremy Hunt affair I find it amazing that he is still in his job. It shows how feeble David Cameron is.’
Mr Hunt stood down as a director of Hotcourses in 2009, but still owns 48.6 per cent of the company. Last night he refused to comment.
But a spokeswoman said that, in line with anti-sleaze rules, he has had nothing to do with the company since joining the Government.
Hotcourses’ joint chief executive Mike Elms, who co-founded the firm with Mr Hunt, denied any impropriety. He said he believed Hotcourses
‘Now Lib Dems calling for Hunt to be sacked’
had recruited one employee as a result of the Milkround advertisement – but insisted Hotcourses paid the individual’s wages, not Milkround. The advert appeared in June 2011.
Three weeks later, Mr Hunt gave Murdoch-owned News Corp the green light to take over BSkyB, provided it hived off Sky News from Sky to allay fears over media plurality. News Corp later pulled out of the deal because of the furore over phone hacking by News International journalists.
Despite having no role in running the company, Mr Hunt retains a starring role on Hotcourses’ website, where he is listed as a member of the ‘management team’.
It declares, ‘Jeremy Hunt is cofounder of Hotcourses’ – before highlighting his glittering political career. It states: ‘Jeremy has stepped aside from all management responsibilities at Hotcourses Ltd to focus on his parliamentary duties, and is no longer involved in the running of the company.’
Several Hotcourses websites in Britain and abroad promote its services on milkround.com and include its website address and contact details on Milkround’s Twitter site.
One of Hotcourses’ international sites includes Milkround’s details in a section on internships. It lists five other websites that offer internships and placements and places www. milkround.com at the top. A Hotcourses guide on how to gain work experience also plugs the firm.
Yesterday Labour’s call for the resignation of Mr Hunt, who is due to give evidence to Lord Leveson’s Inquiry on Thursday, won Lib Dem support. Portsmouth Lib Dem MP Mike Hancock declared: ‘If Jeremy Hunt won’t go of his own volition, the Prime Minister must sack him.’
When he gives evidence under oath to Leveson on Thursday, Mr Hunt is expected to be grilled on text messages he exchanged with Murdoch fixer Fred Michel.
He will also face questions over a memo in which he made private representations to David Cameron supporting News Corp’s bid to take full control of BSkyB. The document, sent just weeks before Mr Hunt took over quasi-judicial responsibility for the bid, expressed concerns that referring the bid to Ofcom could leave the Government ‘on the wrong side of media policy’.
Labour leader Ed Miliband said yesterday: ‘We have got yet more evidence Jeremy Hunt wasn’t the right person to be taking forward the decision about the BSkyB bid.
‘Here is somebody who was an advocate within Government for the bid, so there are huge questions for David Cameron to answer.’
Yesterday Mr Cameron gave a show of support to Mr Hunt at a Tory society wedding in Oxfordshire. Mr Cameron and his wife Samantha were seen chatting with the Culture Secre-
tary as they arrived for the marriage of Naomi Gummer, daughter of Tory peer Lord Chadlington, and Henry Allsopp, godson of the Duchess of Cornwall.
Companies House records state that one of the directors of milkround.com is Susan Panuccio, financial director of News International, who gave evidence to the Leveson Inquiry earlier this year.
Last night a News International spokesman said: ‘Milkround.com has run two job adverts for Hotcourses: one in 2006 and one in 2011 to recruit two web executives. It placed the advert on The Times website for its client, as it does for others. The actual employer, Hotcourses Ltd, is clearly referred to in the text of the ad.
‘Milkround.com has no relationship with HotCourses beyond the provision of recruitment adverts for them. Milkround. com appears as the “employer” in one of those job adverts because of the way the ad is fed to a different website.
‘This is an error. The text makes clear the employer is Hotcourses.’