Rebekah Brooks's former PA 'wouldn't commit crime for her'
Cheryl Carter worked for Rebekah Brooks for almost two decades Rebekah Brooks's former assistant, Cheryl Carter, has told the phone-hacking trial she would never commit a crime for her ex-boss.
Questioned by her barrister, Mrs Carter denied she would do "whatever she asked", adding Mrs Brooks had never asked her to commit a crime.
Mrs Carter is accused of retrieving boxes of notebooks belonging to Mrs Brooks and destroying them in an effort to pervert the course of justice.
Both women deny the same charge.
Mrs Carter worked for nearly two decades as a personal assistant to Mrs Brooks, who was editor of the News of the World, then the Sun, and then chief executive of News International - which owned the newspapers.
'Shouldn't worry'Mrs Carter, 49, of Chelmsford, Essex, was asked by her counsel, Trevor Burke QC, about her relationship with Mrs Brooks.
He said: "Would you do whatever she asked?"
"No," replied Mrs Carter.
Asked whether she would ever break the law for her former employer, she answered: "No, I would not commit a crime for Rebekah Brooks."
Mr Burke then asked her: "Has she ever asked you to?"
"No, she hasn't," was the reply.
Mrs Brooks also denies conspiracy to pervert the course of justice Mrs Carter was then asked about the events of the day that she picked up the seven boxes of notebooks from the News International archive.
On the day after the closure of the News of the World had been announced in July 2011, Mrs Carter had asked her son and a colleague's husband to help with the removal.
Asked by her counsel if, when she called her son to ask for help, she was aware she might be getting him involved in a criminal conspiracy, she replied: "I would never get my son involved in a criminal conspiracy, that is simply not true."
Mrs Carter, who was at times very emotional in giving her evidence, described how police investigating the disappearance of the seven boxes searched her home in Essex.
She was asked by her lawyer if she had phoned Mrs Brooks at the time.
"Yes," she replied. "I told her the police had been and asked about some archive boxes but she shouldn't worry because it was my stuff."
On Tuesday, Mrs Carter told the court the boxes contained her own work and belongings - including cuttings and scrapbooks from the six years she wrote a beauty column for The Sun.
She said the boxes had been labelled as Rebekah Brooks's notebooks because they contained just one notebook that Mrs Brooks had given her when she joined her staff in 1995, and one telephone "record book" labelled with the year 2007.
Under cross examination, prosecutor Andrew Edis QC put it to her that the boxes labelled as Mrs Brooks's notebooks were "what it said on the tin". Mrs Carter denied this.
Boot campShe also rejected an assertion that she had lied about Mrs Brooks being in the office on the day she collected the boxes of notebooks.
The court heard that in police statements made in November 2011, Mrs Carter told police Mrs Brooks was not at work on that day, but at a "boot camp" with her personal trainer.
Under questioning, Mrs Carter agreed that when she made the police statement she did not know that they knew the date the boxes had been picked up.
Mr Edis asked Mrs Carter why she had lied, in her police statement, about the whereabouts of Mrs Brooks on that day.
"It wasn't a lie," she replied. "It was my recollection, I got it wrong. It was two weeks later, I'm sorry."
Mrs Carter is one of seven people on trial in connection with the phone-hacking affair, which led to the News of the World's closure in 2011.
Mrs Brooks, 45, of Churchill, Oxfordshire, denies conspiring to hack phones and conspiracy to commit misconduct in public office.
All seven defendants in the case deny the various charges.
The trial continues.
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