James Murdoch has robustly defended himself in front of Parliament's inquiry into phone hacking at the News of the World, insisting that he knew nothing about the widespread practices. MPs had been sceptical that the News International chief could have sanctioned out-of-court payoffs for staff who had been involved in phone hacking, without even asking for further details about the cases.
His evidence directly contradicts that given by former employees Colin Myler and Tom Crone, who in September told MPs that Murdoch must have known the practice had been widespread.
Immediately after James Murdoch's second appearance before MPs, former member of the culture committee and prominent phone-hacking critic Chris Bryant spoke to HuffPost UK to give his reaction, saying it showed that Parliament had clearly been mislead - the only question was by whom.
Bryant suggested to us that someone should ultimately be brought before the Bar of the House of Commons to explain themselves. This is an exceptionally rare procedure which would see a member of the public standing at the end of the chamber to apologise before MPs:
Conservative member of the Culture Committee, Therese Coffey, agreed that someone had misled Parliament, and if they find out who, they should be brought to the Bar of the House. But she said she wasn't immediately sure where the committee went from here, although there was a lot of evidence to now sift through: