London Evening Standard/London

 

Rebekah Brooks: keen rider

Scotland Yard loaned Rebekah Brooks a police horse, the Standard revealed.
The 43-year-old former News International chief executive rode the retired horse for a year at her farm in Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire, before it was put out to pasture.
The loan, made in 2008 while Lord Blair was Met Commissioner, is likely to raise fresh questions about the close relationship between the police and the Murdoch media empire.
Most of the Met’s police horses are retired with The Horse Trust charity in Buckinghamshire.
Brooks, a keen rider, is married to racehorse trainer Charlie Brooks. A friend said: “Rebekah acted as a foster carer for the horse. Anybody can agree to do this with the Met if they have the land and facilities to pay for its upkeep.”
The Leveson inquiry into press ethics has heard that the relationship between News International and the Met was “at best inappropriately close and at worst corrupt”.
The inquiry also heard how the Met tipped off Brooks in 2006 about the original phone-hacking investigation at the News of the World, where she was editor from 2000 to 2003.
It has been claimed that Brooks, who was forced to resign from News International in the wake of the phone hacking scandal, was a horse-riding companion of Prime Minister David Cameron but she denies this.
Lord Blair said he was not aware of the gift.
Brooks’s spokesman, David Wilson, from Bell Pottinger confirmed the deal took place. “Rebekah acted as a foster carer for the horse.”
Meanwhile, the former president of the Liberal Democrats yesterday heaped fresh pressure on The Sun by claiming the embattled newspaper obtained his confidential telephone records. Simon Hughes told the Leveson inquiry that journalists from the Murdoch tabloid pressured him into revealing his homosexuality for a front page article.
The former LibDem leadership challenger said a journalist at The Sun “had come by information which was records of telephone calls made by me”. He added: “As a result of that I then gave an interview. The Sun splashed on the story in January 2006.”
He claimed the story ended his bid to replace Charles Kennedy as party leader.
Hughes also criticised News International for allegedly covering up its involvement with private investigator Glenn Mulcaire.