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Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt has told MPs he "strictly followed due process" in the way he handled a controversial BSkyB takeover bid by News Corporation.
He said it was not true that the firm had any "back channel" of influence, when he was in a "quasi-judicial" role.
His special adviser Adam Smith has quit over contact with the firm that he said "went too far".
But Labour's Harriet Harman said Mr Hunt had been "backing" rather than "judging this bid" and should resign.
Mr Hunt is currently taking questions in a noisy House of Commons after delivering a statement following the publication of emails at the Leveson Inquiry relating to his handling of the takeover.
Labour say these show he fell short in his impartial "quasi-judicial" role in ruling on the company's bid to fully take over broadcaster BSkyB.
But Frederic Michel, head of public affairs at News Corp, has said his references to "JH" in emails were actually shorthand for Mr Hunt's special adviser, Mr Smith, and has said he had no direct contact with the culture secretary, after he assumed responsibility for ruling on the BSkyB bid in December 2010.
Jeremy Hunt has Number 10's backing but his position remains precarious. There are several fronts to the culture secretary's defence.
By consulting with regulators and civil servants throughout the bid to he insists he acted with integrity and scrupulous objectivity, with the permanent secretary at the culture department agreeing that Mr Hunt's special advisor should act as a conduit with News Corp during the process.
Mr Hunt argues that the texts and emails seen so far are a partial, second hand account of what was going.
And yet, the chummy channel of communication from his aide to News Corporation provided the company with a huge amount of inside information, sometimes before Parliament, and raises questions about whether the information given to the company undermined the quasi-judicial process or breached the ministerial code.
The issue is sure to dominate Prime Minister's Questions and Ed Miliband may probe the Prime Minister about his chat with James Murdoch about the BSkyB bid at a dinner at Rebekah Brooks' house in December 2010.
At the same time, Rupert Murdoch will be giving his evidence to the Leveson enquiry, testimony that could be very uncomfortable for Cabinet ministers past and present.
Mr Smith said the "content and extent of my contact [with News Corporation] was done without authorisation from the Secretary of State".
He added that he was resigning because his "activities at times went too far and have, taken together, created the perception that News Corporation had too close a relationship with the department, contrary to the clear requirements set out by Jeremy Hunt and the permanent secretary that this needed to be a fair and scrupulous process".
Mr Hunt took over responsibility for ruling on Rupert Murdoch's controversial BSkyB bid when Lib Dem Business Secretary Vince Cable was stripped of the role, having been secretly recorded saying he had "declared war on Mr Murdoch".
In the "quasi-judicial" role, Mr Hunt had to act with impartiality - but Labour says information that emerged at the Leveson Inquiry into press standards on Tuesday showed he had "fallen very far short" of his duties.
A string of emails released by the inquiry suggests there was a steady flow of information from the culture secretary's office to News Corp advisers from June 2010 onwards.
In one, dated 24 January 2011, the day before Mr Hunt announced his intention to refer the takeover bid to the Competition Commission, Frederic Michel told News Corp executive James Murdoch he had managed to get some information on Mr Hunt's statement adding: "Although absolutely illegal..>!".
James Murdoch told the inquiry on Tuesday that the reference had been a "joke" - but Labour says that it meant Mr Murdoch was provided with "the complete strategy and the very words that Jeremy Hunt was going to use" before he made his statement to Parliament.
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In his Commons statement, Mr Hunt said his adviser's resignation was a "matter of huge regret" to him as he regarded Mr Smith as a man of integrity - but he said the volume and tone of communications had been "clearly not appropriate in a quasi-judicial process".
Mr Hunt went on to say he had followed due process - had involved independent regulators, despite not being obliged to do so - and said Labour's claim that "there was a back channel through with News Corporation were able to influence my decisions" was "categorically not the case".
"When I present my evidence the public will see that I conducted this process with scrupulous fairness throughout."
But Ms Harman said it was clear Mr Hunt had already "made up his mind" about the takeover before he was given responsibility for it and he should not have taken it on in the first place.
She said the ministerial code said he was responsible for the conduct of his special advisers.
"Your conduct should have been quasi-judicial but it fell far, far short of that and short of the standards required by your office," she told him.
"The reality is, you weren't judging this bid, you were backing this bid and so you should resign."
Mr Hunt replied that that idea was "laughable" as he had taken a series of decisions that were "against what News Corporation had wanted".
In noisy exchanges at Prime Minister's Questions, Labour leader Ed Miliband said if Prime Minister David Cameron "can't defend the conduct of his own ministers , his ministers should be out of the door - he should fire them".
Mr Cameron said Mr Hunt "has my full support for the excellent job that he does". The prime minister said it would be wrong to "pre-judge" the Leveson Inquiry and accused Mr Miliband of not being able to resist "the passing political bandwagon".
But Mr Miliband said there was a "shadow of sleaze" over the government and accused the PM of "putting his cronies before the interests of the country".
Mr Hunt has said he "acted with total integrity and conducted this process scrupulously fairly" and has asked Lord Justice Leveson to bring forward his appearance at the inquiry, which he had been due to address in May.
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BBC political editor Nick Robinson said he understood that the top civil servant at Mr Hunt's department had signed off on the decision to appoint Mr Hunt's political adviser Mr Smith as the "point man" for contact with the Murdochs, which may provide the culture secretary with some "cover".
Conservative MP Damian Collins, who sits on the Commons culture select committee questioned the reliability of the emails, suggesting Mr Michel may have been "beefing up what he knew and what he had been told to impress his boss".
News Corp, which owns the Sun, the Times and the Sunday Times, and has a 39% interest in satellite broadcaster BSkyB, abandoned its bid to take over the remaining 61% of the broadcaster in July 2011, after the phone-hacking scandal emerged.
Its boss, Rupert Murdoch, is facing what could end up being two days of questioning at the inquiry under oath.
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