Leveson asks Downing Street if Coulson was only aide spared rigorous vetting

Downing Street has been asked to explain whether Andy Coulson is the only senior press adviser to recent prime ministers to have been spared high-level security vetting. Lord Justice Leveson, whose judicial inquiry is examining relations between the government and the media, in particular News Corporation, said he wanted to find out whether the issue represented "a smoking gun". The former head of the civil service Lord O'Donnell also told the inquiry that the culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, should have known if his special adviser was giving feedback to News Corporation on its controversial £8bn takeover bid for BSkyB. The judge requested a full breakdown of the security vetting status of recent top Downing Street media advisers following revelations that the former News of the World editor received only mid-level security checks before starting work for David Cameron in government. O'Donnell was responsible for security vetting when Coulson became the prime minister's director of communications in May 2010. He oversaw the decision not to subject Coulson to rigorous "developed vetting" (DV) checks that involve testing whether there is anything in an individual's background that might make him or her vulnerable to blackmail. The Cabinet Office saidon Monday it was preparing a full list for the inquiry. Downing Street sources conceded it was likely to show that most of the previous incumbents of the role were subject to DV, or its equivalent, under earlier systems. Coulson was allowed to operate with a mid-ranking "security check" level of vetting that allows only supervised access to the most secret documents. He told the Leveson inquiry last week that he nevertheless had unsupervised access to top-secret files. The Guardian understands that most, if not all, of the senior media advisers to prime ministers from John Major to Gordon Brown were cleared to a higher security level than the former News International employee. They include Sir Christopher Meyer, who worked for Major; Alastair Campbell and David Hill, who worked for Tony Blair; and Michael Ellam and Simon Lewis, who worked for Gordon Brown. Coulson's successor, Craig Oliver, has also had DV. Appearing after O'Donnell at the Leveson inquiry on Monday, Campbell said he underwent DV "very early on" in his job in government. "It was just assumed that I would have to be," he said. "In the transition there had been discussions and it was assumed that we would be involved in all the sensitive areas that Tony Blair would be taking charge of." Downing Street sources argue that the decision to exempt Coulson was made by Sir Jeremy Heywood, then Downing Street permanent secretary, as part of a wider policy of reducing the number of special advisers who had access to the most secret documents in order to improve the handling of sensitive intelligence and because the process was expensive. O'Donnell told the inquiry a more rigorous DV of Coulson "wouldn't have gone into enormous detail about phone hacking" but he said it would have investigated whether there was anything in Coulson's background that might make him susceptible to blackmail. He said the vetting was also concerned with "your financial position and your personal life". He also said that as part of other routine checks, Coulson should have signed forms disclosing any shareholdings that could lead to conflicts of interest. It emerged last week that Coulson held shares in News Corporation, worth £40,000, while working as No 10 press chief. "A form was signed but it didn't disclose shareholdings and it should have done," O'Donnell said. When O'Donnell said he couldn't recall which of Coulson's predecessors had been subject to developed vetting, Leveson said: "It might be worthwhile identifying if and when each of the comparative equivalent holders of that particular post received the higher level of vetting … only to demonstrate that there isn't a smoking gun here. If there is, then there is." O'Donnell claimed that "quite often" press secretaries would start working for prime ministers with a lower level of security clearance than developed vetting. "Some people who operate in that job would say: 'Look, what I really want to do is get involved in the economy,' a whole set of issues which basically didn't go into the kinds of things where regular top-secret access was required, and they just wouldn't want to go there," O'Donnell said. "It quite often turned out that they would start off with that view, or, in this case, the No 10 permanent secretary would have that view, and then, as events changed, they would realise the first big terrorist event came along and then there would be a lot of papers which, by their nature, were all top secret, and then you would say, actually, this isn't working, we need to give access to this." Simon Lewis, Coulson's immediate predecessor, director of communications for Gordon Brown from June 2009 to May 2010, told the Guardian on Monday he underwent DV as soon as he took up his post. "To do my job I needed certain levels of access," he said. "That was make very clear to me upfront. It was put to me that there are certain jobs that are so close to the prime minister that by definition you need it [developed vetting]." Lewis said he was interviewed and had to submit names of friends and family who would also be contacted. Sir Christopher Meyer also confirmed that he was cleared to the highest security level before he started as John Major's press secretary in 1994 because he had previously worked as the deputy ambassador to Washington.