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| Version 0 | Version 1 |
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| Brown accuses News International of using criminals | Brown accuses News International of using criminals |
| (40 minutes later) | |
| Gordon Brown has claimed News International used "known criminals" to gain access to personal information about himself and others. | |
| The former prime minister accused the news organisation of having links to the "criminal underworld". | |
| And he accused the Sunday Times of running a story "with the purpose of bringing me down as a government minister". | And he accused the Sunday Times of running a story "with the purpose of bringing me down as a government minister". |
| News International said it had no comment about Mr Brown's allegations. | |
| It comes after a week of allegations about phone hacking at another News International title, the News of the World, which is accused of using a private investigator to listen to the mobile phone messages of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler. | |
| 'I'm shocked' | |
| The latest claims relate to personal details it is claimed were obtained for a front-page Sunday Times report that Mr Brown had bought a flat owned by Robert Maxwell at a "knock-down price". | |
| Mr Brown told the BBC the story had been "completely wrong" but the company had been "trying to prove a point" and had aimed to bring him down as chancellor. | |
| He alleged the newspaper had got access to his building society account and legal files: "I'm shocked, I'm genuinely shocked to find this happened because of the links with known criminals who were undertaking this activity, hired by investigators who were working with the Sunday Times." | |
| "If I, with all the protection and all the defences and all the security that a chancellor of the exchequer or a prime minister has, is so vulnerable to unscrupulous tactics, unlawful tactics, to methods that have been used in the way that we've found - what about the ordinary citizen? | |
| "What about the person - like the family of Milly Dowler - who were in the most desperate of circumstances, at the most difficult occasions in their lives - in huge grief ... and then they find that they are totally defenceless in this moment of greatest grief from people who are employing these ruthless tactics?" | |
| Medical condition | |
| The former PM also said he was "in tears" when he was told by News International journalists that the Sun had details of his son Fraser's medical condition - he has cystic fibrosis - as he had wanted the information to be kept private. | |
| "Sarah and I were incredibly upset about it, we were thinking about his long term future, we were thinking about our family," he said. | |
| He said he did not know how the newspaper had got access to the details: "The fact is, it did appear and it did appear in the Sun newspaper." | |
| News International said the Sun newspaper is satisfied about the methods in which it obtained the story about Gordon Brown's son's medical condition. | |
| Mr Brown dismissed claims that he had done little to tackle alleged abuses of press power when he was in office. | |
| He claimed that in his final months in office, he had wanted a judicial inquiry - but he said: "At the time however there was very few people who accepted this was the right thing to do." | |
| He and his wife Sarah attended former News of the World editor Rebekah Brooks's wedding - but Mr Brown said he had only recently received information about how News International had allegedly got access to some of his private information. | |
| He told the BBC an inquiry should look at how the company abuses its power. | He told the BBC an inquiry should look at how the company abuses its power. |
| Former Labour home secretary Alan Johnson told the BBC he did not call for an investigation into the original hacking inquiry because it would have been seen as a "low political blow" against Andy Coulson - an ally of then opposition leader David Cameron. |