Rupert Murdoch: There was a cover-up at the News of the World And this person forbade people to go and report to Mrs Brooks or to James. That is not to excuse it on our behalf at all. I take it extremely seriously that that situation had arisen. He said the failure to probe more deeply when Clive Goodman, the News of the World's royal editor, and the private detective Glenn Mulcaire, were jailed for hacking in 2007 was an "omission" on his part, and apologised to all the "victims" including "innocent" News of the World staff who lost their jobs. He also told the Leveson Inquiry he was "surprised" to discover the volume of emails which passed between one of his lobbyists and Jeremy Hunt's office during News Corp's bid to buy out BSkyB. Mr Hunt's special adviser, Adam Smith, resigned yesterday after 163 pages of emails which contained numerous exchanges between him and Frederic Michel, News Corp's head of public affairs, were published by the Inquiry. Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, this morning suggested once again that the Culture Secretary should also resign after he was accused of "backing, rather than judging" the BSkyB bid when he was put in charge of scrutinising it in 2010. Mr Murdoch said that "with hindsight" he wished he had spoken to the former News of the World royal editor, Clive Goodman, in 2007 when he wrote a letter to his managers saying others were involved in hacking. If I had really got into it when Mr Goodman wrote that letter in 2007, making accusations that other people were involved, I should have gone there and thrown all the lawyers out of the place and seen Mr Goodman one on one and cross-examined him myself. If I came to the conclusion that he was telling the truth I would have torn the place apart and we wouldn't be here today.