THE Opposition Leader, Ed Miliband, has called for Rupert Murdoch's empire in Britain to be broken up

THE Opposition Leader, Ed Miliband, has called for Rupert Murdoch's empire in Britain to be broken up, saying the media baron has ''too much power over British public life''.

He will push for cross-party agreement on new media ownership laws because the company's response to the News of the World phone hacking scandal was not enough to restore trust and reassure the public, he told The Observer newspaper.

''I think we've got to look at the situation whereby one person can own more than 20 per cent of the newspaper market, the Sky [pay TV] platform and Sky News,'' he said. ''I think that's unhealthy, because that amount of power in one person's hands has clearly led to abuses of power within his organisation. If you want to minimise the abuses of power, then that kind of concentration of power is frankly quite dangerous.''