Five awkward questions the Select Committee could ask James Murdoch to see if he was telling the truth back in July.

Was he told the reasons for the Gordon Taylor pay-off in his meeting with Tom Crone and Colin Myler in summer 2008?- This, oddly enough, is probably the easiest for him to answer, even though his previous evidence has been directly contradicted by both Crone and Myler. He will presumably repeat pretty much of what he said in July. That this is not his memory of the meeting (which he does not dispute happened), and that he does not recall being told the full reasons for the pay-off.

Was he made aware of the legal advice of QC Michael Silverleaf?- Now it gets trickier for Murdoch junior. Legal advice from a QC is expensive and only sought when there are serious concerns about the outcome of a case. In this instance Silverleaf’s advice – which was made public by the law firm Farrer’s last month – was explosive. Not only did he advise settling with Taylor, he made it clear that the evidence Taylor had managed to get hold of provided ‘a powerful case that there is (or was) a culture of illegal information access used at NGN in order to produce stories for publication’. This is not the sort of advice you would want to keep secret from your chief executive. Or would you?

Does James Murdoch think that the real reasons for the pay-off were purposefully kept from him?- In some ways this would seem like a more attractive defence for Murdoch. If he claimed he was deliberately kept in the dark it could insulate him from complicity in the NGN cover-up of phone hacking. And it could better explain his ignorance of the evidence emerging and of the legal advice. But it’s also a highly risky defence. There is already significant evidence to show knowledge of the extent of phone hacking at senior levels in NGN. Though there is no smoking gun proving Murdoch’s own knowledge of it, more evidence keeps coming out, and will continue to do so – thanks to the Leveson Inquiry. If Murdoch says anything misleading to the Select Committee this could be exposed by the Leveson Inquiry next year.

How does he explain the subsequent – alleged – pay-off to Max Clifford?- It is possible – though looks increasingly unlikely – that Murdoch was not told the reasons for the pay-off to Gordon Taylor. But it is hard to maintain this argument for the second big pay-off made to settle a phone hacking case. Max Clifford is reported to have been given £1 million to settle his claim against the News of the World. Once is just about believe-able, but twice?

How can he explain his almost total ignorance – for three years – of illegal activities at a company he was in charge of?- From a career perspective, this question – though more general - is perhaps the hardest for James Murdoch to answer. He was given responsibility for NGN in 2007. We now know that some of the most senior figures at NGN were made aware that phone hacking went further than Goodman and Mulcaire in 2008. We know that this was the reason they were advised to make a significant payment to Gordon Taylor – to keep this quiet. This was presumably – though we do not yet know – why a similar payment was made to Max Clifford in 2010. If his senior executives knew, and the company’s lawyers knew (and had written explicit, paid-for, advice on this basis), and the company had made large payments to settle court cases in this knowledge, then why on earth didn’t the boss know?