Culture secretary Jeremy Hunt was defended today by the Prime Minister after an explosive memo was revealed to the Leveson inquiry.
The memo relates to the purchase of biscuits for Cabinet meetings, a task previously in the hands of Vince Cable, the business secretary, but he was stripped of the role after being caught by a newspaper sting. Mr Cable was caught on tape saying how much he hated custard creams. This clear bias against the custard cream meant he could no longer order biscuits impartially. The responsibility was then handed to Hunt who then proceeded to order custard creams by the hundredweight.
The controversial memo revealed that Hunt had expressed, through his advisers, to the Custard Cream International that he favoured their product and would see to it that everything would be done to ensure their product would be the biscuit of choice.
Eschewing the really hard interviews, the Prime Minister chose to go on ITV's hard-hitting news - definitely news and not celebrity froth peddling - show Daybreak to support his colleague. "Jeremy [Hunt] acted completely impartially when selecting the biscuits. He may have said in this memo that he preferred the custard cream, instructed his aides to ease the path with the manufacturers, negotiate concessions which would avoid the need for competition queries, but after I gave him the job of selecting the biscuits, he put all of that to one side and acted completely impartially.
"I had to take Vince Cable off the job because of his unguarded and unwise comments, but Jeremy Hunt's comments were irrelevant because after he made them, he acted totally differently", he continued before adding "besides, nobody at Custard Creams International seems to remember anything about any of this, so happy days".
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