David Cameron yesterday marked a break with the era of Andy Coulson by appointing a senior BBC TV news editor with no links to the Murdoch empire as the new No 10 communications director.
Craig Oliver, who made his name revamping the News at Ten and who ran the BBC's general election coverage last year, will be paid £140,000 a year and will act as a political special adviser.
The recruitment of a senior BBC figure shows that Cameron and George Osborne, who met Oliver over the weekend, recognise that they need to place some distance between Downing Street and Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation.
Coulson announced his resignation on 21 January after concluding that the swirl of allegations about illegal phone hacking from his time as News of the World editor had made his job impossible. Coulson has always denied knowledge of any wrongdoing.
Downing Street said that No 10's relations with News Corp had nothing to with the decision to hire a BBC executive. One source said: "Craig was simply the best candidate."
Fears of offending the Murdoch empire were highlighted yesterday when Tom Baldwin, Oliver's Labour counterpart, asked members of the shadow cabinet to show restraint on phone hacking and not to attack one newspaper group "out of spite".
In an email sent on his behalf, which was leaked to the New Statesman, Baldwin also called on shadow ministers not to link allegations of phone hacking with questions about News Corp's bid to take control of BSkyB.
The email said: "On phone hacking … this is not just an issue about News International. Almost every media organisation in the country may end up becoming embroiled in these allegations … We must guard against anything which appears to be attacking a particular newspaper group out of spite."
Further evidence that hacking was used regularly by the News of the World emerged yesterday when new details of the case brought by Nicola Philips, the publicist who is suing the newspaper, were published. Philips alleges the tabloid obtained a story about an affair between actor Ralph Fiennes and a Romanian singer by hacking into her mobile phone.
Philips, who was then working for celebrity publicist Max Clifford, brokered a deal between the singer, Cornelia Crisan, and the Sunday Mirror and the Mail on Sunday, to sell her story for £35,000. She says the News of the World learned of the story by listening to her voicemail messages. The paper tracked down Crisan and published details of her relationship with Fiennes on the same day as its rival titles.
The recruitment of Oliver was Coulson's last act before he left Downing Street on Monday. Coulson telephoned Oliver towards the end of the last week and arranged for him to meet Cameron and Osborne over the weekend.
Cameron said: "I am very pleased that Craig Oliver is to become the new director of communications at 10 Downing Street. Craig has formidable experience as a broadcast journalist. He will do an excellent job in explaining and communicating the government's programme."
Oliver, who voted Conservative at the general election but is not a party member, said: "I'm delighted to be joining David Cameron and his team at such an exciting and challenging time. It's difficult to leave the BBC after a fascinating few years, but this is an opportunity I can't turn down."
Oliver, 41, has been the controller of English at BBC Global News since June 2010 and was the BBC's general election editor last year. He has also worked as editor of BBC News at Ten and News at Six.
From 2002 to 2006, he was the head of output at ITV News. Before that he was output editor at Channel 4 News and at ITV News. He was educated at a Scottish comprehensive and studied at the University of St Andrews. He is married to the BBC News presenter Joanna Gosling, with whom he has three young daughters.
Oliver came to Cameron's attention – via Coulson – in the runup to last year's general election. Coulson broke ground by bypassing the press and giving stories straight to News at Ten.
