WHEN THE MET LOANED REBEKAH A HORSE

A RETIRED police horse was loaned by Scotland Yard to former News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks, it was revealed yesterday.

The ex-editor of The Sun and News of the World was given use of the horse in 2008 – the year after the Sunday newspaper’s royal editor and a private investigator were jailed for phone-hacking.

The disclosure that she was provided with the 22-year-old horse called Raisa to act as ‘foster-carer’ for the animal raises fresh questions about the Met’s relationship with her.

Mrs Brooks, 43 – arrested last July by police investigating phone-hacking and bribery – is a keen rider and is married to Old Etonian racehorse trainer Charlie Brooks. Mrs Brooks was editor of The Sun at the time she was given the horse from the Met’s Mounted Branch and kept it at her sprawling Cotswolds home, paying for its upkeep and vet’s bills.

She had the horse for more than a year before giving it back to the Met in 2010, when it was found a new home with a police officer in Norfolk and subsequently died.

The loan of the horse was made towards the end of Sir Ian Blair’s tenure as Met Commissioner. The former police chief, now Lord Blair, says he was unaware of the arrangement between the police and newspaper executive.

When Met police horses come to the end of their working life they can be lent out to members of the public, although they remain the property of the Met.