Leveson inquiry: Hack victim?

REBEKAH Brooks’s phone was hacked twice a week by colleagues at the News of the World while she was editing the Sun, the Leveson Inquiry has heard.

Scotland Yard invited her to join their 2006 prosecution of a journalist and private detective working for the Sunday tabloid as a potential victim of illegal interception of voicemails. Ms Brooks – who was a former editor of the News of the World, and became chief executive of parent company News International in 2009 – did not take up the offer.

She later passed on information about the hacking investigation she gleaned from the police to the News of the World’s lawyers. Robert Jay, QC, counsel to the press standards inquiry, said yesterday: “Rebekah Wade, as she then was, was one of the most accessed since 2005, twice a week.”