A former top lawyer for Rupert Murdoch's British newspapers insists he told the mogul's son there was evidence of widespread phone hacking more than three years before a scandal over the practice erupted.

Tom Crone questioned claims made by James Murdoch - chairman of News International, the British arm of his father's media empire - that he had not been fully informed about an email indicating that hacking was rife.

For many months, News International insisted the illegal accessing of the mobile phone voice messages of celebrities and crime victims was confined to reporter Clive Goodman who, along with private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, was jailed in 2007.

But in July the company closed the 168-year-old tabloid, amid public outrage over the disclosure that reporters had hacked the phone of a missing schoolgirl, Milly Dowler, who was later found murdered.

Crone told Britain's inquiry into media standards on Wednesday he was "pretty sure" that during a meeting in June 2008, he showed Murdoch a printed copy of an email that included transcripts of illegally intercepted voice mail messages.