Rebekah Brooks was briefed on the original phone hacking inquiry into News International in 2006 by police, the Leveson inquiry heard on Monday.

A memo by Tom Crone, the head of legal at News of the World, summarised the briefing that Brooks received in an email sent to her by then News of the World editor Andy Coulson on 15 September.

Crone said that Brooks, then the editor of the Sun, was told by police that they had formal legal editor Clive Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire "bang to rights."

The email, sent within weeks of Goodman and Muclaire's arrests in August 2006 began: "Here is what Rebekah told me about info relayed to her by the cops."

Crone said that police had said they would not widen the case unless they found "direct evidence" of wrongdoing, writing: "They suggested that they were not widening the case to include other NoW people, but would do so if they got direct evidence, say NoW journos directly accessing the voicemails (this is what did for Clive)."

According to the memo, police had told Brooks they had uncovered "over £1m of payments", barrister Robert Jay told the inquiry.

Crone resigned as legal affairs manager at News International at the height of the News of the World phone hacking scandal in July 2011.

Goodman and Mulcaire were arrested on 8 August 2006. They pleaded guilty to intercepting voicemail messages left on royal aides' phones on November 29 2006 and were jailed on January 26 2007.

The Met has been heavily criticised for limiting the scope of its investigation despite evidence from Mulcaire's notebooks that there could be thousands of hacking victims.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission announced on Friday that it is investigating a senior Scotland Yard officer for allegedly inappropriately passing information about the 2006 phone-hacking inquiry to a News International executive.