Phone-hacking trial: Rebekah Brooks denies Eimear Cook version of lunch conversation

Brooks was then shown a £100,000 contract between the News of the World and a company called Euro Research and Information owned by convicted phone hacker Glenn Mulcaire. The witness said that this should have been brought to her attention but as it was broken down into weekly payments she had never seen it.

Another email from 2002 was then shown to the witness about police officers involved in the "Soham murder" investigation allegedly downloading child pornography. In the email Brooks asks "any luck with the website". The witness explained that over the course of investigations on occasion "we had to get into illegal websites, it's tricky as we are breaking the law". Asked if there was anything unusual about discussions of this sort Brooks replied that one of the roles of newspapers was to "police the police". The article resulting from this investigation was then shown to the jury.

The jury was then shown emails relating to the news that the body of Milly Dowler had been found in September 2002. A journalist writes to Brooks informing her the Daily Mail was about to break the news and she responds "right". The court has heard that Glenn Mulcaire hacked the voicemail of Milly Dowler when she was first reported missing in April 2002. Brooks denied having any knowledge of this. In another email shown to the court Brooks discusses getting early editions of the Sunday Mirror through the agency of a "friendly delivery driver". The bundle of documents was then completed with a memo that Brooks was leaving the News of the World in January 2003 to become editor of the Sun.

Brooks was then asked about evidence given earlier to the jury by Geoff Sweet, a sports reporter with the News of the World. Sweet had written an article on 18 August 2002 which mentioned that phone hacker Glenn Mulcaire, as well as playing for AFC Wimbledon, worked for the "special investigations team" at the News of World. Asked if she remembered the piece, Brooks said she did not as it was "12 years ago", adding that the investigations team itself was disbanded in 2001 and the only investigations team was that ran by Mazir Mahmoud. Sweet had also testified that knowledge that Mulcaire worked for the paper was "common knowledge." Brooks told the jury that as a sports reporter, Sweet was based outside of the office meeting players and managers and attending events. "You barely saw sports reporters in the office, except to do their expenses."

The defence moved on to Brooks' role in another story, the "Soham story", when two girls, Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, went missing. Brooks said that her diaries showed she was away from the office when the story broke in August 2002, but flew home when she heard the details. The bodies of Holly and Jessica were found on Saturday the 18th after Brooks returned. The witness told the court that the first edition of the paper had been set up and there was a great deal of work to change the story in one day. It was also the first day of the Premier League and there were over 50 pages of sport on the day Sweet's story about Mulcaire was published. "I'd concentrate on that, not a comment piece by Geoff Sweet on page 52," Brooks told the jury.

The defence then moved in to a new subject, former home secretary David Blunkett. Brooks was reminded that then News of the Word editor Andy Coulson visited Blunkett in August 2004 to put allegations to him that he was having a relationship with a then unnamed woman. On the following Monday the Sun named the woman as Kimberly Quinn. The prosecution had suggested that this was evidence of the two papers working together in developing a story "based on a hack". Brooks told the court that in April 2004 the News of the World had run a story about David Beckham and this had led to "things being not great" between her and Coulson.

"It was a difficult professional situation, the two newspapers were in effect rivals," she said. Brooks said she knew Victoria Beckham personally and if he was working on a story about David Beckham mentioning it "could have been fatal for his paper" as "I might be going to lunch with Victoria that day and mention it". "It was too complicated and things were strained for a while," Brooks told the court. Brooks was asked if she would have "had any hesitation about stealing that story?" She replied, "probably not," adding that she might have ran it differently "not as a big expose but perhaps as part of an interview". The witness told the court that the News of the World ran a spoof edition, a fake paper so rivals would not steal the exclusive, on the Beckham affair. However the Daily Mail and Daily Mirror somehow heard about the story the Sun had, therefore "stealing a march on us". "I was not best pleased," Brooks said.

Brooks then said another factor the court should know is her "strong professional relationship with Blunkett," the then home secretary. They went for dinner on occasion and the Sun sponsored the police bravery awards. She was also "good friends" with a special advisor to Blunkett, who she introduced to News International CEO Les Hinton. "We were close," the witness told the court. Brooks told the court she had no idea the News of the World was about to run a story on Blunkett or that people close to him had their voicemail hacked by Glenn Mulcaire. The witness said that as it became harder for newspapers to hold on to their exclusives overnight it became the practice to release them to the news channels with the condition they "ran your logo on screen". Her recollection was that she had found out about the Blunkett story some time on the Saturday night via either Sky or BBC news.

The witness was then asked about the Monday edition of the Sun naming Kimberly Quinn as the woman having the affair with Blunkett. "I don't want to go into sources," Brooks said, however her team had went "full steam ahead" and "it became quite obvious very quickly that the relationship between Blunkett and Quinn was not as secret as people thought" suggesting cuttings from newspapers had discussed them attending events together. Brooks told the court that another of Blunkett's special advisors, Hugh Evans, eventually confirmed the name. On Coulson's telephone records, which show frequent contact between the two during the period, Brooks said that the two of them speaking every day was normal as things had "got less frosty" since the Beckham story in April. The contacts were nothing unusual the witness told the court. Responding to the records of one evening when the texts appeared to be "every minute" during the night, Brooks replied: "My guess is they would have been something personal." The witness told the court that it was unlikely that Coulson had told her he was visiting Blunkett as this would have stuck in her mind. "I would have been intrigued," she said.

The court then took a short break

When the jury returned the defence moved on to the testimony of Eimear Cook, the former wife of golfer Colin Montgomery. Cook has testified that at a lunch in 2005 Brooks had told her how easy it was to hack a phone. The defendant told the court that mutual friends, the Manoukians, had told her Cook was having problems with the media and would she come and meet her, "a request to help" as Brooks put it. The former editor said she had heard of Cook but not ran many stories about her as she was a more a "Daily Mail/Hello type person". Asked what was discussed, the defendant told the court that she recalled there was a discussion about Cook having "trouble getting across her side of the story" over her marriage issues with Montgomery. Brooks also told the court that Cook made allegations about an incident that happened with Montgomery which surprised her and asked Brooks, as editor of the Sun, to "follow it up and do something about it". The witness told the court that without an affidavit there would be no evidence and therefore "I thought nothing more about it until this case."

Jonathan Laidlaw then showed the court Cook's witness statement about the lunch. She denied being "grumpy" or laughing as she discussed a domestic incident between her and then partner Ross Kemp. Brooks said that the dates did not match, as the incident with Kemp did not happen until some weeks after the lunch. The clash with Kemp was also a "terrible incident in my life" and "I wouldn't be laughing, not with a stranger". Brooks also told the court that there was no discussion about phone hacking, Cook had said Brooks told her "people who are wealthy are stupid not to change their PINS." The witness told the court: "It just doesn't sound like me. I don't know why I would have suddenly have brought that up, just no."

The court was then shown a story from the Sun about Paul McCartney and a fight he allegedly had with then wife Heather Mills which Cook had said was given an example as a story sourced from interception of voicemails. Brooks denied this stating: "I never published stories based on phone hacking during my editorship."

The morning finished with the court being shown a sample of campaigns undertaken by the News of the World under Brooks' editorship; these included ones against knife crime and against bullying in the army.

The court then rose for lunch