Amidst pressure for a separate investigation into his conduct, Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt said today he is ready to hand over text messages and emails he shared with his special adviser Adam Smith over the Sky takeover bid to a press ethics inquiry.

“I will be handing over all my private texts and emails to my special adviser to the Leveson Inquiry and I am confident that they will vindicate the position that I handled the BSkyB merger process with total integrity,” Hunt told reporters outside his London home.

Hunt said he is sure that the details of his correspondence with Adam Smith would “vindicate” his position that he had acted with “total integrity”. James Hunt, who is accused of breaking laws in his dealings with Rupert Murdoch’s US-based News Corp., is being forced to resign.

The Culture Secretary was given a responsibility to assess whether the government should approve the BSkyB bid or not, particularly because other media groups opposed it saying it would give the Murdochs too much influence over the UK media.

Last night Simon Hughes, Liberal Democrat deputy leader, also demanded a probe to find whether or not Hunt violated the ministerial code of conduct. He also argued that there was no reason for Prime Minister David Cameron to refuse to open a separate government investigation, saying that Hunt will address the claims when he appears before the Leveson Inquiry.

“What I cannot understand is why the matter of the ministerial code of conduct, which is to do with do you take responsibility for your special adviser, is not something the Prime Minister should immediately refer to the person who has been given the job of doing that”, BBC quoted Hughes as saying.

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