Brooks: I was repeatedly told allegations were false

FORMER News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks said yesterday that she was repeatedly told by the News of the World that allegations of phone hacking by the paper’s journalists were untrue.

She said it was only after she saw papers lodged in a civil damages case brought by actress Sienna Miller last year that she understood how serious the situation was.

“We had been told by people at News of the World at the time — they consistently denied any of these allegations in various internal investigations,” she said.

“It was only when we saw the Sienna Miller documentation that we realised the severity of the situation.”

Like Rupert and James Murdoch, Brooks began her evidence by offering her “personal apology’ for what had happened at the paper.

“Clearly, what happened at the News of the World and certainly (with) the allegations of voicemail intercepts of victims of crime is pretty horrific and abhorrent,” she said.

Asked whether she had any regrets, she said: “Of course I have regrets.

“The idea that Milly Dowler’s phone was accessed by someone being paid by the News of the World, or even worse authorised by someone at the News of the World, is as abhorrent to me as it is to everyone in this room.”

Brooks, who was editor of the News of the World at the time of Milly Dowler’s disappearance in 2002, said that at the time she believed that the press had acted with “huge caution’ and done its best to respect the family’s privacy.

She said that she only learned of the allegations that Milly Dowler’s phone had been hacked when it was reported in the press.

She said she found it “staggering to believe” that anyone at the News of the World could have authorised it.

“My instant reaction, like everybody else, was one of shock and disgust that a family who had suffered so much already, that these allegations clearly added immeasurably to their suffering,” she said.

“The first thing I did was write to Mr and Mrs Dowler with a full a apology to say that we would get to the bottom of the allegations.”