ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: After weeks of bad headlines about G4S failures the Army has stepped in so with just a few days to go to the Olympics opening ceremony will it all be plain sailing from here. Let’s say a very good morning to the Minister for Culture, Media and Sport and can I start first of all, Secretary of State, before we talk about the Olympics, do you feel you have now put the BSkyB controversy well and truly behind you?

JEREMY HUNT: Well I’ve got a very varied role and that was obviously a very hot potato at the time that we had it but I came through that and I was always very confident that after the very thorough process of the Leveson Inquiry people would see actually what happened and then as the truth came out people would understand that in what was probably the most scrutinised deal in the history of British corporate takeovers that actually the government behaved totally properly and that was the important thing.

DM: You said you had come out of it stronger and wiser, wiser in the sense that a lot of people at the time and still do say how was it possible that you didn’t know what your aide, your assistant, Adam Smith, was saying to contacts within BSkyB?

JH: I think we’re going to learn lots of lessons and one of them will be about the role of special advisors and I don’t want to pre-empt what Lord Justice Leveson says but you definitely learn things going through this but I think what people want to know is that going into it they had a Minister and they had a government that was determined to behave properly, whatever our views about the bid and BSkyB may have been before, that during the process we behaved scrupulously fairly and I think that was what came out.

DM: And in terms of the stronger bit, you said in an interview last week “from hero to zero but definitely back again”, back to hero, stronger and onwards and upwards?

JH: Well I definitely think, as you say, this is now behind me personally but I think there’s lots more I can contribute and what we’re about to talk about, the Olympic Games, is probably the best example.

DH: We are about to talk about it but one last question, you see BSkyB is a very profitable company and it is a very rich prize for somebody who might want to buy it, do you think that News Corporation could re-bid in the future, especially if it reshapes itself and we’ve seen Rupert Murdoch make certain changes to the boards of element of News Corporation that he’s on, do you think it could come back and make another bid at some time for BSkyB?

JH: Well that of course would be up to them but what they know and what the public need to remember is that we have a lot of checks in place, an incredibly thorough process and I think the public are much more aware of that process now than they were before so this would not be a tick box exercise. There would be the opportunity for the Secretary of State to have a proper investigation, to ask Ofcom to do a study on the media plurality aspects of the deal and so this is something that will be scrutinised very, very carefully before any deal was allowed to happen.

DH: Okay, on to the Olympics and do you feel that the bad publicity, particularly about the security elements, so close to the kick-off of the Olympics, has rather spoiled things as we head into that opening ceremony?

JH: Not at all, I mean I think if you looked at it as a balance sheet on the positive side we’ve got 20% of the athletes now installed in the Olympic Village, they love it. We’ve got the transformation of the Olympic Park, the poorest part of London totally transformed and the biggest construction project in Europe done on time and to budget and we’ve got fantastic British sporting success, not just what Bradley Wiggins we hope will do today but what our athletes will do going forward. On the negative side we’ve got the G4S issue which has now been sorted out, we had a couple of bus drivers that got lost, we’ve got what may happen at Heathrow on Thursday – we’ll manage that as well but I think overall it has been a very encouraging start and I think reading the papers this morning I think you can see the buzz, it’s going to be a terrific summer.

DM: You mentioned the strikers, the potential strikers, what do you say to them? Just please don’t do it, not now, we can have discussions about this?

JH: I think the point is we’ve got around 600 people who man the immigration desks at Heathrow, we’ve got 70,000 volunteers who are giving their time free of charge throughout the summer for the Olympics and I think they’ve just got to ask themselves, they may or may not have a legitimate grievance but is this the time really when the whole of the rest of the country is pulling together, when Labour and the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats are putting aside our political differences in the national interest, surely this is a time not for promoting an industrial grievance but for just putting the country first. I’m sure it is only a minority of them that really want to do this and I would just ask them to think again.

DM: And on the G4S issue, the stronger and wiser Jeremy Hunt, is this another lesson you would have learned with hindsight, kept a closer eye on that from your department? The blame has largely fallen on the Home Office but surely the DCMS has some of the blame to take on this one?

JH: Well we kept a very close eye on the contract and despite the fact that we were assured repeatedly by G4S management that they would be able to deliver the numbers in their contract, we always made sure that we had a very robust contingency plan in place because security is something you don’t take risks with so we knew that we had a back-up plan if needed it and the moment we heard from G4S that they weren’t going to be able to deliver, we put that back-up plan in place so I think as Ministers we’ve really done what we can. As far as the public are concerned, they need to be reassured that at no stage was the actual security of the Games at risk. The mix of people making the Games secure may change slightly, slightly more soldiers, slightly more police, slightly fewer G4S security guards, but the numbers will be there and they can look forward to a fantastic as well as a safe Games.

DM: Okay, I want to look after, to beyond the Games and first of all this issue of legacy, what is it for you? It is not just about this regeneration of a small part of the UK, that huge regeneration that has gone on in the East End but what is it beyond that?

JH: Well first of all the regeneration, if I can put it this way, of the British construction industry because twenty years ago we were sometimes a laughing stock as a country, we couldn’t even build a stadium without it going over budget and being massively delayed but here you have the biggest construction project in Europe completed on time, in fact most of it a year early, and to a budget that was set in 2007 and I hope that British construction and design companies, British architects, will go on to win contracts for future Olympics and for future global sports events on the back of the incredible success of London 2012.

DM: And this will have been the catalyst. What about the legacy for your own department? It’s said that in a way a lot of your work is done when the Olympics are finished, that your department could be dismembered in a reshuffle, that parts go off to other departments and you’d be out of a job or looking perhaps for a bigger job?

JH: Well I have been involved in no discussions along those lines and I think it’s a bit of scaremongering by the Labour party. The Olympics show that my department is a small department capable of delivering very big projects and after the Olympics are behind us we’ll be focusing on our next big challenge which is to make Britain into Europe’s technology hub, something that could create hundreds of thousands of jobs for our country going forward. We have an amazingly strong technology industry, our creative industries, our film industry, our music industry, our TV industry are the biggest in Europe and if we pull all that together we’ve got a chance not just to be Europe’s Hollywood but Europe’s silicon valley as well.

DM: You sound excited about that and of course on the broader economic picture we really need a shot in the arm like that. Do you believe that the Olympics is also in a position to deliver that kind of boost to the British economy?

JH: I think it can. It will obviously have an impact just this summer in terms of the additional people who come to the country but I think the broader impact is on our confidence because we’ve been through a very difficult patch and I think that what we’re going to see over the next seven weeks is us showing the world what we’re really capable of. Not just the fact that we are capable of putting on the world’s biggest sport event in the calm, professional, disciplined way that I know we will but also playing to our great cultural strengths, the fact that London has three of the world’s top five museums, the way the opening ceremony will tell a billion people across the world that we are the home of literature, the home of music, the country that was the home of the industrial revolution that has really shaped the modern world and I think that will be a terrific boost for our national confidence just at a time when we really need it.

DM: And of course your colleague in the Treasury, George Osborne, will be hoping for just that kind of boost. Seeing that poll this morning where, what is it, 44% of people don’t think he’s really up to the job, I’m sure you’ll tell us that you feel he’s doing a very good job but do you feel that within the party he has bitten off more than he can chew, having obviously the key economic role but also looking internally at party strategy?

JH: Absolutely not. You don’t become Chancellor because you want to be Mr Popular. Look at Geoffrey Howe with his 1981 budget or look at Nigel Lawson with his budgets, the job of the Chancellor is to take really tough and difficult decisions that have their payback many years hence when you have taken the decisions in the interest of the economy and George Osborne has been one of the bravest Chancellors in history, putting through a package of spending cuts, about 19% cut in public spending across the course of this parliament, it has never been done in peace time before and as a result of that he’s kept Britain out of the firestorm that has engulfed the eurozone and many other countries and that’s what he will be remembered for.

DH: Okay, Mr Hunt, thank you very much indeed. Jeremy Hunt there, the Culture Secretary, the man with a very busy summer ahead of him.