The former wife of Sir Paul McCartney never authorised former News of the World editor Piers Morgan, or anybody else, to listen to her voicemails, she has told the inquiry into press standards.

Chat show host Morgan has previously told the inquiry he listened to a voicemail message left to Mills by Sir Paul, but refused to say when or where he heard it because he wanted to protect a "source".

Ms Mills said she had never authorised Morgan, or anybody, to access or listen to her voicemails, and neither had she ever played a recording to the former editor.

Ms Mills told the inquiry that in early 2001 she and Sir Paul had argued about a trip she was planning to Gujurat, and while she stayed with a friend in Middlesex he left a series of messages apologisin on her voicemail.

"In the morning, when I woke up, there were many messages, but they were all saved messages which I did not quite understand, because normally they wouldn't be but I didn't think too much of it. I thought I must have pressed a wrong button."

She told the hearing she had never recorded the messages and deleted them straight away. But she said she was then called by a former Trinity Mirror employee - who the inquiry heard was not a Daily Mirror journalist, nor anybody working under the supervision of Morgan - saying they had heard a recording of the message.

She said she threatened to take action if the story was published, and it wasn't. But in 2006, in a piece in the Daily Mail, Morgan referred to having listened to the message.

Also giving evidence, the News of the World's former head of news told the inquiry he was told to deliberately mislead the McCanns' spokesman about the newspaper's plans to publish Kate McCann's diary.

Ian Edmondson said former editor Colin Myler told him to have a "woolly" conversation with Clarence Mitchell about plans to publish Mrs McCann's diary so he did not know what the paper was planning.

Mr Myler has said he would never have published it if he had realised Mrs McCann was not aware of the paper's plans, and claimed Mr Edmondson told him he had cleared the story with Mr Mitchell. But Mr Edmondson said he was deliberately unclear in his conversation with Mr Mitchell, on the express instructions of Mr Myler.