UK gov't turns against Murdoch BSkyB bid

The British government on Tuesday joined in calls for Rupert Murdoch to shelve his ambition of taking full control of British Sky Broadcasting as a widening investigation of phone hacking and bribery at his newspapers fed the backlash against the powerful media mogul.

The decision followed a dramatic accusation by former Prime Minister Gordon Brown that Murdoch's UK newspapers employed criminals to obtain confidential information about his family and ordinary people, and as police officers came under sharp criticism for failing to turn up evidence of some of the most serious spying allegations.

Prime Minister David Cameron's office said the government would vote with the opposition Labour Party on Wednesday to support a motion calling on Murdoch and his News Corp to withdraw the US$12 billion bid for highly profitable satellite broadcaster BSkyB.

Labour leader Ed Miliband said the motion, which is not legally binding but is a powerful expression of sentiment, would be the simplest way to ensure that the bid isn't considered until the criminal investigations are complete.

"Ultimately, that is a decision for News Corp but we would always expect people to take seriously what Parliament has said," said Cameron's official spokesman, Steve Field.

Cameron's decision marked a sharp breach in relations with News International, the UK branch of News Corp., which published the Sunday tabloid News of the World, the focus of two criminal investigations.

Public outrage

Since public outrage exploded last week, when it was claimed that News of the World employees hacked the phone of Milly Dowler, a 13-year-old murder victim, Cameron has said he would have accepted the resignation of his friend Rebekah Brooks, the chief executive of News International. On Monday, he said Murdoch should focus on the hacking and bribery issues, not the takeover.

Cameron has been embarrassed by the arrest of former News of the World editor Andy Coulson, who from 2007 until January was the prime minister's communications director.

They "really exploited people - I'm not talking so much about me here now, I'm talking about people who were at rock bottom," Brown told the BBC. Brown said he knew of no legitimate way The Sun could have found out about his son's illness, though the newspaper said it used legitimate means.

News International defended the story, issuing a statement which said that it was "able to assure the Brown family that we did not access the medical records of their son, nor did we commission anyone to do so."

At a tense House of Commons parliamentary committee hearing, one current and two former senior officials of London's Metropolitan Police said they regretted that an investigation of the News of the World in 2006 had not uncovered the extent of the alleged phone hacking.

Documents gathered in the first investigation yielded 3,870 names, 5,000 landline numbers and 4,000 mobile numbers that may potentially have been hacked, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers told the committee. So far, she said, police had contacted 170 potential targets of hacking.

BSkyB shares fell for the sixth straight day, closing down 3.3 per cent at £6.92 (US$11.03) on the London Stock Exchange. At the start of last week, they were at £8.50.

- AP