Michael Howard refused to “catch a diplomatic chill” as home secretary so he could avoid a dinner with Rupert Murdoch that John Major had urged his cabinet to swerve, papers reveal.

The “jamboree” was to launch new BSkyB channels, but at the time, Murdoch’s UK newspapers were reporting unfavourably on Major’s leadership, files released at the National Archives show.

No 10’s dim view of Murdoch emerged in a memo to Major by his press secretary, Gus O’Donnell, who wrote that he was surprised “he [Murdoch] ‘phones [the then Sun editor] Kelvin MacKenzie most days to keep up to date on the British scene.

“God alone knows what Kelvin tells him, as he is often very poorly informed. This explains why Murdoch frequently obtains very biased views of what is happening here.”

In another memo, O’Donnell informed Major he could be “fairly certain” that Murdoch spent little time reading his own papers, adding: “Do you want me to discourage other cabinet members from attending the launch?” The word “yes” in unknown hand is scrawled next to it.

Howard had already accepted the invitation for the banquet on 1 September 1993. Major’s private secretary, Rod Lyne, wrote to the then prime minister: “I suggested that he might catch a diplomatic chill”.

Lyne noted Howard’s attendance had been recorded in the Times, and added that “Murdoch’s campaign to drive the other tabloids down” and the Independent out of business, by cutting his cover prices, “has become very controversial”. He said: “Murdoch has had the nerve to invite you again – (for 23 September).

In a handwritten note to Major, Howard explained he had “not thought it practicable to cry off” because he was due to hold a press conference the morning after the dinner, “so any ‘chill’ would be very conspicuously ‘diplomatic’”.

Although he shared Major’s dismay at the behaviour of Murdoch’s papers, “we shall need them at the next election,” Howard wrote, and “the case for some harmless, costless gesture such as attending the dinner seems to me quite strong”.

Howard also worried that it would not look good if the then shadow home secretary, Tony Blair, attended, but no minister did so.

In his note ahead of a future meeting between Major and Murdoch, to discuss “editorial lines taken by his newspapers”, O’Donnell advised the then prime minister to deliver several messages, including that his papers “are now simply anti-everything and anti-me [Major] in particular”.

The note continued that the Times, facing falling circulation, had had five editors in 10 years, and Murdoch “must be wondering whether he should have held out for his first choice, Paul Dacre, who has increased the Daily Mail’s circulation by 5%, instead of [Peter] Stothard”.