LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's most senior civil servant published his private advice to former prime minister Gordon Brown on Thursday to fend off a charge by Brown that he had rejected an inquiry into allegations of phone hacking at Rupert Murdoch's UK newspapers.
The unusual step by Gus O'Donnell, head of the Civil Service and the Cabinet Office, which advises the government, was a measure of the political heat generated by the scandal in Britain, whose current prime minister David Cameron has said politicians of all parties had been under Murdoch's spell.