The former wife of Sir Paul McCartney did not authorise former News of the World editor Piers Morgan, or anybody else, to listen to her voicemails, she told the inquiry into press standards.

Chat show host Morgan previously told the inquiry he listened to a voicemail message left to Heather 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.

"I couldn't quite believe that he would even try to insinuate, a man that has written nothing but awful things about me for years, would relish in telling the court if I had played a voicemail message to him," she said.

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

"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," said Ms Mills. "I thought I must have pressed a wrong button."

Meanwhile, 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. Mrs McCann said she felt "violated" when the private journal appeared in the newspaper on September 14 2008.

Mr Myler has said he would never have published it if he had realised she was not aware of the paper's plans, and claimed Mr Edmondson told him he had cleared the story with Mr Mitchell.

Thursday's session concluded the first module of the inquiry, which looked into the culture, practices and ethics of the press in general. The second module - looking at relations between the media and police - will begin on February 27.