FORMER Sun editor Rebekah Brooks has revealed her "embarrassment" at turning down the exclusive story on the MPs' expenses scandal to the Old Bailey.

Giving evidence in the phone-hacking trial, Mrs Brooks admitted that, "in terms of errors of judgment" it was "quite high on my list". She also described being summoned to Downing Street over information leaked by a public official about an alleged Iraqi plot to launch an anthrax attack on the UK.

Mrs Brooks, 45, said her news team approached her about the expenses story in spring 2009 - a month before it was broken by The Daily Telegraph. She said: "My news team [told] me they had heard that the unredacted information to do with MPs' expenses could be available. It was going to cost quite a lot of money.

"I thought about it for too long. I should have gone ahead. In terms of errors of judgment, [it's] probably quite high on my list." She added: "It was quite embarrassing we didn't get it."

Mrs Brooks, of Churchill, Oxfordshire, who denies conspiring to hack phones, conspiring to commit misconduct in public office and conspiring to pervert the course of justice, was in the witness box for a sixth day of evidence. She also told the court she authorised a payment to a public official for leaked information about the possible anthrax attack.

She said she was deputy editor of The Sun in 1998 when it was contacted by someone alleging a "cover-up" by the security services over the alleged terror plot.

Mrs Brooks said she authorised a journalist to "enter into an agreement with the public official if the story turned out to be true".

She said she was called to Downing Street with representatives from MI5, MI6 and GCHQ before the story had been published.

"They tried to encourage us not to publish," she said. "The public had a right to know."