Crone - shown giving evidence to the committee in September - said the information he gave was 'my best recollection of the relevant events' (Still taken from Parliament Live TV)
The culture select committee has published further written evidence as part of its phone-hacking investigation, which includes a letter from former legal manager at News International Tom Crone admitting that his recollection when giving evidence in September "was incorrect in relation to certain details".
In response to a letter from the committee, which questioned Crone on details which emerged from evidence submitted by Julian Pike - a partner at law firm Farrer & Co - and published last week, the former legal manager said the evidence he gave "was at the time my best recollection of the relevant events".
"Having seen the evidence given by Julian Pike and the documents produced by him which now appear on your website, I accept that my recollection was incorrect in relation to certain details. I apologise for that.
"By way of explanation, since my departure from News International in early July I had no access to office files or contemporaneous records of any kind relating to relevant 2008 meetings, conversations, etc., and, in fact, had probably not looked at such records since 2009."
When asked why he did not previously mention a briefing note on the Gordon Taylor case, which Pike's documents showed to have been sent by Crone to the final editor of the News of the World Colin Myler, Crone said at the time he "had no memory of the note or of the May 27 meeting between Colin Myler and James Murdoch".
The note, which was sent to Myler on 24 May 2008, described News Group Newspaper's position as "very perilous".
"Since I had discussed relevant matters with Colin Myler prior to appearing before you on September 6, I know that he did not remember these things either," Crone said in his response to the committee, published today.
"We may both be criticised for this, but I think it is probably not unusual for busy people to fail to recall detail (or even the existence) of meetings and conversations from more than three years earlier without being able to refer to written records.
"Having seen the documents on your website, it is clear that my first conversation with Mr Myler about the emergence of the new evidence from Gordon Taylor’s lawyers and its impact on our defence case was earlier than I had previously thought and must have occurred a day or two prior to Saturday May 24.
"Following that conversation a meeting for Mr Myler to discuss the evidence and the need to settle the Taylor case with James Murdoch was fixed for the following Tuesday, May 27."
Murdoch is due to appear before the committee on Thursday, after being recalled in September.
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