It's a tricky question, isn't it? How does one conclude that someone is "not a fit person" to run a major international business?


The House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee's report into News International and Phone-hacking, published on 30 April 2012, reaches this conclusion.  However a minority of MPs, all made up from the Conservative Party's ranks, begged to differ, not with the facts set out in the report, but with its judgement of unfitness; saying instead that such a view was outside the scope of the enquiry.


It is, I think, beyond question that 'phone-hacking took place in News International newspapers almost as a matter of common practice.  We do not know how many other newspapers indulged in this practice, and we may find out at some time.


The phone-hacking led to newspaper articles which brought the personal details of victims' lives into the public domain, and which in many cases were sensational. 


The mindset which produced these articles was one which asserted that there was no real right to privacy from the rich, the famous, and those who had been exposed to the public eye, sometimes unwillingly, such as the parents of Milly Dowler.


Despite what has been said by various witnesses, who have sought to play down the degree to which those "in charge" were complicit,or even aware, of what was going on; it is hard to believe that these people, who read the headlines, who paid the bills, who were supposed to know how information was gathered and used, did not well know what was happening. It is as if they concluded time and time again that these scoops resulted from the intervention of a journalistic fairy godmother; as if Eichmann had told his trial that he thought the massacred Jews of Europe had all gone on holiday. 


But let us cast aside our doubts and assume that the Murdochs are telling the truth, concealing nothing, that these things went on under their noses, unseen and unsmelt; emails went unread, minions were dutiful enough not to pass on their knowledge of illegality, but happy to be complicit in it, the sources of incredible stories not questioned.


In such a case, I submit that there is a total failure of oversight here. And this failure of oversight, if a deliberate withdrawal from the management of his business, would be an outrageous and reckless abandonment of responsibility warranting an assertion of unfitness; if a failure through incapacity then an admission of unfitness.


In every case there is no logical alternative to the majority conclusion of the Committee.


It is the function of our legislators to seek to protect the public, and to suggest that it is not is fatuous in the extreme.