PM hosted Coulsen weeks after resigning as press chief

Former News of the World editor Andy Coulson stayed as a guest of Prime Minister David Cameron at Chequers in March, it was disclosed today.

Mr Coulson, who resigned as Downing Street director of communications in January, had dinner and stayed overnight at the Buckinghamshire country house.

A No 10 source said: “The Prime Minister invited him to thank him for his work.”

Mr Coulson was arrested last week over alleged corruption and phone hacking at the Sunday tabloid while he was editor.

He was bailed the same day.

The disclosure of his Chequers stay comes amid criticism of Mr Cameron’s decision to appoint Mr Coulson as his communications chief despite his 2006 resignation from the News of the World over phone hacking.

Mr Cameron revealed last week that he had met Mr Coulson since his resignation, but *not recently and not frequently''.

“When you work with someone for four years as I did, and you work closely, you do build a friendship and I became friends with him,” the Prime Minister told a press conference last Friday.

“He became a friend and is a friend.”

Amid calls from Labour leader Ed Miliband to apologise for his Downing Street appointment, Mr Cameron insisted he had had no reason to doubt Mr Coulson’s assurances that he had no knowledge of hacking under his editorship.

At Prime Minister’s Questions in the Commons on Wednesday, Mr Cameron said: “If it turns out he lied, it won’t just be that he shouldn’t have been in Government, it will be that he should be prosecuted.”