Miliband wants Murdoch empire broken up

The Labour leader also said that the media mogul has had too much power over British public life as he and his party continued to seize the initiative on the scandal which has already seen a slew of high profile arrests and resignations, culminating yesterday with the questioning of former News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks and the resignation of Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson.

Mr Miliband told yesterday’s The Observer: “I think he has too much power over British public life.”

The News Corp empire has been diminished with the closure of the News of the World over the phone hacking scandal, but it still owns The Sun, The Times, The Sunday Times and 39 per cent of BSkyB.

Having already called successfully for the resignation of News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks, Mr Miliband said the Government now needed to look at media ownership rules.

“I think that we’ve got to look at the situation whereby one person can own more than 20 per cent of the newspaper market, the Sky platform and Sky News,” he told The Observer.

“I think it’s unhealthy because that amount of power in one person’s hands has clearly led to abuses of power within his organisation.

“If you want to minimise the abuses of power then that kind of concentration of power is frankly quite dangerous.”

His attack also exposed differences within the coalition Cabinet, as Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg joined calls for greater “plurality” only for Defence Secretary Liam Fox to caution politicians against over-reacting.

Mr Clegg said the Lib Dems had been calling for the change for years, but suggested cross-party talks on the issue should wait for the recommendations of the judge-led inquiry set up in response to the hacking scandal.

“We do need to look again in the round at the plurality rules to make sure there is proper plurality in the British Press,” he told BBC1’s The Andrew Marr Show.

“A healthy press is a diverse one, where you’ve got lots of different organisations competing, and that’s exactly what we need.

He added: “The judge-led inquiry will of course during the course of a year produce some ideas about what we should do, and then I think if we can act on it on a cross-party basis as we did last week in the House of Commons, all the better.”

But Dr Fox warned against “jumping on bandwagons” in pursuit of headlines.

“Obviously any government is going to continually want to look at how the Press is structured, but we do have a very pluralistic Press in this country,” he said.

“I think politicians would be wise at the moment not to over-react, that there is a definite feeling of politicians wanting to, if you like, get their own back on some elements of the media.”

‘yet more will face questions’

The lawyer for the family of murdered teenager Milly Dowler has said that he expects more high-profile figures to face questioning over the hacking scandal.

Mark Lewis, said that Rebekah Brooks had been a “firewall” for the Murdoch empire and that he arrest meant everybody was “in play”.

Mr Lewis said: “This is getting higher up and higher up.

“Rebekah Brooks was like the firewall almost in respect of the Murdochs, the firewall below them, but firewalls do burn through eventually, they just slow things down. Everybody, everything is in play.

“Everybody presumably will be questioned.”