Leveson inquiry: Frédéric Michel, Adam Smith 11.50am: The Guardian's Dan Sabbagh has just tweeted: 11.50am: Jay asks whether he exaggerated that text conversation with Hunt in a memo to Murdoch. Michel denies he exaggerated the conversation, but says he put his own interpretation on it. 11.46am: On 24 December 2010, Michel text Hunt to say James Murdoch asked him to be the point of contact for the culture secretary and Smith. Michel says in the text "glad John Zeff is in charge of dossier." Hunt replied to say: "All contact with me now needs to be through official channels until decision made." Michel says he took this to mean Hunt's office was his official channel. He adds that he stopped having contact with Hunt "except for a few private contacts during the day." 11.44am: Jay says it is clear that Michel was working with Smith to send Hunt "helpful arguments" relating to the BSkyB bid. Hunt replied: "Pleasure." Michel says he does not know if these arguments were about the BSkyB bid. 11.40am: Jay raises a memo from 15 November 2010 to Michel which explained that Hunt was unable to meet James Murdoch. The memo says: "Jeremy's very frustrated about it but the permanent secretary has also now been involved." Michel confirms that this message was from Smith, Hunt's special adviser, who suggested Murdoch and the culture secretary have a private conversation by mobile phone. 11.38am: In October 2010, Michel asked Hunt if he will see News Corp"s arguments for Sky bid. Hunt later texts back to say this is "persuasive." Jay says these exchanges between Hunt and Michel showed that the culture minister was "reasonably favourably disposed to the bid." Michel replies he would not have drawn that conclusion. 11.35am: Jay turns to text messages sent by Michel between June 2010 and December 2010. On 27 August 2010, Michel sent a text message to Hunt about a speech by BBC director general Mark Thompson. Hunt replied: "Thanks. I agree, nothing about BBC role in competitive market. Michel described Thompson's speech as "a whimper" in a follow-up text. Hunt replied: "Because he trained his guns on you he failed to make his case to me." These text messages were in response to Thompson's MacTaggart lecture in Edinburgh, in which he warned that BSkyB was too powerful and threatened to "dwarf" the BBC and its competitors. that BSkyB is too powerful and threatens to "dwarf" the BBC and its competitors 11.34am: The Guardian editor-in-chief, Alan Rusbridger, has just tweeted: 11.31am: Jay asks whether Michel exaggerated Smith's position in his emails to James Murdoch. Michel says his emails were "accurate accounts of the conversations" but adds: "Maybe I was trying to keep the morale up internally" because News Corp was facing closed doors from other government departments. He does not agree that he spun the emails to put himself in a good light. "It was a very few, rare occasions where this happens," he says. 11.30am: Michel describes Smith was "very straightforward" and available to him. Jay asks whether he believed Hunt was in favour of the BSkyB bid. "It's something I can't say," Michel answers. He believed that Hunt was acting impartially over the takeover. 11.26am: Jay says that there were 191 telephone calls, 158 emails, and 799 text messages between Michel and the DCMS, of which 90% were with Smith. Between 28 November 2011 and 11 July 2011 Smith sent 257 text messages to Michel, Jay adds. Michel says he did not have any reason to believe Smith was or was not in favour of the BSkyB bid. 11.25am: The Guardian-editor-in-chief, Alan Rusbridger, has just tweeted: 11.24am: Michel says he believed that special advisers always represented the views of their boss, the secretary of state. He believed some of the information from Adam Smith came after the special adviser's conversations with Hunt. There was two or three events where I had the impression some of the feedback I was given was discussed with the secretary of state before it was given to me. 11.22am: Michel's first witnes statement has now been published on the Leveson inquiry website. 11.21am: Michel is asked why he did not make clear in emails to James Murdoch that "JH" did not mean conversations with Hunt himself. He explains: I think it's a shorthand I decided to use, both because I was having a lot of conversations at the beginning of January with the office of the secretary of state and I was trying to be as quick as I could when writing those. Michel traded "less than five" messages with John Zeff, Hunt's head of media, the inquiry hears. 11.20am: Michel says there were no conversations with Hunt between 24 December 2010 and the end of July 2011, but there were texts with Hunt. 11.19am: Michel is asked why he lobbied other government departments outside Cable's before December 2010. He says that News Corp was not given much chance to make representations to Cable "even though we tried." Jay asks whether he hoped another government department might be able to influence Cable. Michel says other departments were "very interested in hearing our case" because they wanted a debrief on the complex issues and undertakings involved in the takeover. 11.17am: The Guardian's Dan Sabbagh has just tweeted: 11.16am: Michel says he did not believe it was inappropriate to lobby the office of the secretary of state. "I was never of the view that it was inappropriate to at least try put the view or make representation to his office," he adds. Jay asks why, then, he used "JH" as referring to Hunt's team in his emails to James Murdoch. "I don't think anything inappropriate ever took place," he says. 11.15am: The Guardian's Dan Sabbagh has just tweeted: 11.12am: The Guardian's Lisa O'Carroll has just tweeted: 11.11am: The Guardian deputy editor, Ian Katz, has just tweted: 11.10am: Michel is pressed on when he first knew about News Corp's £8bn bid for BSkyB. He says there were internal discussions and reports in the media from when he joined in May 2009, but that he was formally told the day before it was publicly announced. He adds that he did not have a specific view on which government ministers would and would not be in favour of the bid. He was tasked to discover what government ministers - including business secretary Vince Cable - thought of the bid. 11.07am: Michel says he was only aware News Corp was launching a bid for full control of BSkyB the day before it was publicly announced. He adds that he was not in the "circle of confidence" that knew in advance. In his witness statement, Michel says his only contact with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport was "solely with Mr Hunt's adviser Adam Smith and the (DCMS) director of media Jon Zeff," according to the Evening Standard reporter Tom Harper at the court: 11.04am: Michel joined News Corp as director of public affairs for Europe in May 2009. He says News Corp's BSkyB bid "became a very full job" from September 2010 and increased "further and further" throughout the process. It took up 80% of his time, he adds. 11.02am: The inquiry has resumed and News Corporation lobbyist Frédéric Michel takes the witness stand. Robert Jay QC, counsel to the inquiry, is leading the questioning. 11.01am: Sky News reporter Martin Brunt has just tweeted: 10.57am: The Guardian's Maya Wolfe-Robinson has just tweeted: 10.56am: Brooke has completed his evidence and the inquiry is taking a short break. 10.55am: Brooke is asked what functions he believes the reconstituted press regulator should have. He says: "I wouldn't want to do a big bang," and advises that the powers of the new regulator be increased over time instead of all at once. Leveson asks when there be this appetite for change. Brooke says a "big bang" change to press regulation "needs a big person to do it." 10.50am: You can watch today's hearing live on the Leveson inquiry website here. 10.48am: Brooke says it is a "great pity" the government and press was not able to reach an agreement and move forward. The government might have been able to sleep better at night because it had not crossed the Rubicon, but it might have been better if had, says Brooke. 10.47am: The Guardian's Josh Halliday has just tweeted about the Trimingham case: 10.42am: Brooke is asked whether he was lobbied by the press in this period. He says he cannot recall any lobbying over press regulation between 1992 and 1994. 10.42am: Brooke says he was effectively being asked by the then prime minister, John Major, to take the white paper back to the drawing board. Later, in June 1994, the then home secretary proposed that the white paper could be published without the contested draft clauses. 10.41am: The Guardian's Josh Halliday has just tweeted about the Trimingham case: 10.38am: No 10 wrote to Brooke to recommend continuing pressure to improve self-regulation but asked that a white paper be redrafted featuring arguments against it, the inquiry hears. 10.34am: Lord Wakeham was instrumental in incorporating a privacy tort into the Press Complaints Commission code, says Brooke. 10.29am: Brooke is asked whether the government believed the Press Complaints Commission, when established, would be a regulator. He replies: "We believed it would be a self-regulator." Lord Justice Leveson presses Brooke on what he understood by "self-regulator." Brooke says "he would not go to the stake for the phrase," indicating that the government was not entirely sure of the self-regulatory function. 10.23am: Sky News has just tweeted about the Trimingham case: 10.22am: Brooke says it is correct that the government gave the press one more chance to avoid regulation after the 1993 Calcutt report. He describes further proposals suggested by the MP Clive Soley as "draconian." 10.19am: Calcutt's report on the press was leaked so the government had to bring forward its response, says Brooke. His 1993 Review of Press Self-Regulation reiterated the potential need for a statutory press tribunal, as well as sterner laws to protect privacy. Brooke says in his witness statement that the government was "extremely reluctant" to introduce statutory regulation of the press. The press has been not subject to statutory interference since 1695. The first time it happens is going to be a very significant event. 10.17am: Elsewhere at the high court, BBC political correspondent Carole Walker has just tweeted about a privacy case involving Chris Huhne's partner Carina Trimingham: 10.15am: Brooke was the national heritage secretary between 1992 and 1994, replacing David Mellor in the post. Barr asks whether the press exacted revenge on Mellor because he appointed Sir David Calcutt to review self-regulation of the press. Brooke cannot remember having any conversations about that at the time. 10.07am: Lord Brooke, the former national heritage secretary, has taken the stand. David Barr, junior counsel to the inquiry, is questioning Brooke. 10.05am: The Guardian's John Plunkett has sent us breaking goat news from the steps of the high court. No kidding: that is a real goat. 9.58am: The Guardian's Esther Addley has just tweeted from the high court: 9.51am: Good morning and welcome to the Leveson inquiry live blog. Goat at the Leveson inquiry. Photograph: John Plunkett/Guardian All eyes will be on the culture secretary Jeremy Hunt today as his former special adviser, Adam Smith, and the News Corporation lobbyist, Frédéric Michel, give evidence about their role in News Corp's abandoned £8bn bid for BSkyB. It will be the first time the pair have spoken publicly since the huge row over Hunt's handling of the bid erupted at the end of April. Smith resigned on 26 April after he admitted he allowed the impression to be created of too close a relationship between News Corp and Hunt's Department for Culture, Media and Sport. More than 160 pages of emails published at the Leveson inquiry showed that News Corp's Michel was given inside information on ministerial thinking over the company's bid for BSkyB, including handing over commercially confidential information and repeatedly suggesting that Hunt wanted the bid to succeed. Smith will be pressed on whether he was a rogue operator acting without the authority of Hunt and other senior colleagues in the department. Jonathan Stephens, the department's top civil servant, will give evidence on Friday and Hunt is expected to be called in the coming weeks. The pair will appear after evidence from Lord Brooke, the Tory cabinet minister between 1989 and 1994. Brooke was the national heritage secretary from 1992 to 1994 in a department later renamed Department for Culture, Media and Sport; he was the Northern Ireland secretary between 1989 and 1992.