Blistering and no-holds-barred. A committee of British MPs has branded Rupert Murdoch as a person who's not fit to 'exercise the stewardship of a major international company' and said the News of the World and News International misled them over the scale of the phone hacking scandal at the newspaper.

Rupert Murdoch appeared at the Leveson inquiry enquiry into standards across the British press last week and insisted that he wasn't aware of the malpractice and blamed executives for keeping him in the dark.

That enquiry was prompted by last summer's work by the cross-party Culture, Media & Sport Committee of MPs who were investigating how widespread phone hacking was at the News of The World.. And at Westminster the MPs grilled Rupert and James Murdoch, journalists and staff from the newspaper, as well as lawyers and police looking after phone hacking victims, about the embarrassing series of events. The phones of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler and the families of victims of the 7/7 London bombings were hacked

Today the Select Committee criticised 3 of his former execs : former Executive Chairman Les Hinton, former News of the World editor Colin Myler and former legal manager Tom Crone. The committee also concluded Murdoch exhibited 'wilful blindness' to the dealings within his News International empire. News Corp has responded saying it's 'carefully reviewing the select committee's report and will respond shortly".

The Committee's findings will be sent on to the House of Commons but where this all goes from here is yet to be decided.