Rebekah Brooks has no intention of resigning as chief executive of News International despite new allegations the News of the World hacked into the voicemail of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler, according to the BBC’s Robert Peston.
Brooks was editor of the tabloid when the hacking was alleged to have taken place following Milly’s disappearance in March 2002.
Peston claimed this morning that Brooks is expected to tell News International staff that she is ‘deeply shocked’by the allegations but had no involvement in ‘that instance of alleged phone hacking, or others, and knew nothing about it”.
Brooks is also reported to have spoken with News International owner Rupert Murdoch and is ‘under no pressure from him to stand down”.
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A News Internaitonal executive is reported to have told Peston: ‘”He [Murdoch] is backing her 100 per cent”.
Another colleague told him: “She is committed to find out the truth of what happened here and leading the company through this difficult time.
‘Her job is to see this through”.
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Peston claimed Murdoch and Brooks have a ‘remarkable and close working relationship’- with one colleague telling him ‘she is as close to him as his children”.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister David Cameron has described the latest scandal surrounding the News of the World as a ‘truly dreadful situation”.
“On the question of the really appalling allegations about the telephone of Milly Dowler, if they are true, this is a truly dreadful act and a truly dreadful situation,’he said.
‘What I have read in the papers is quite, quite shocking, that someone could do this actually knowing that the police were trying to find this person and trying to find out what had happened, and we all now know the tragedy that took place.”
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