'Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson met at hotel before he quit No 10'

Rebekah Brooks booked a breakfast rendezvous with Andy Coulson at a “discreet” Mayfair hotel a week before he quit No 10, the Old Bailey heard today.

At that time Brooks was chief executive of News International and Coulson was the director of communications for David Cameron’s government.

In January 2011 Brooks sent an email to her PA Cheryl Carter, copied to Coulson, asking her to find a hotel “somewhere discreet” because “I need to see Andy”. Ms Carter suggested the “quiet and discreet” Halkin hotel.

Coulson sent an email: “Fine with me, Can we say 7.45. Thanks.”

The court also heard that Brooks, when editor of the Sun, took former News of the World royal editor Clive Goodman to lunch and offered him work in April 2007 after he had been released from his prison sentence for phone hacking — but that weeks earlier she had written to the Press Complaints Commission saying that “any journalist who breaks the law” would face the sack.

Brooks, Coulson and several others are charged with a variety of offences. All the defendants have pleaded not guilty to all the charges.

The case continues.