By Martin Hickman

Andy Coulson today denied hearing a voicemail that had been hacked from Sienna Miller's phone by one of his reporters, Dan Evans.

In his evidence, Evans said he played a phone message left by Daniel Craig on Ms Miller's phone to Mr Coulson and another News International executive in the middle of the News of the World's newsroom. A week after the hacking  which is not disputed — the Sunday tabloid ran a front-page story stating that the actors were having an affair.

At the phone hacking trial, Andrew Edis QC, for the Crown asked Mr Coulson: "I'm going to suggest there was a moment when Dan Evans played you a voicemail of Sienna Miller's".

"No, it didn't happen," Mr Coulson replied.

He denied knowing that when he agreed royal editor Clive Goodman could pay £500-a-week to a new royal source that the source was private detective Glenn Mulcaire, who was hacking phones.

Giving evidence for the third week, Mr Coulson told the Old Bailey: "I had put Clive under pressure. He had come up with a suggestion and I was prepared to go with it."He told me it was a source close to the young royals."

He was asked a decision taken the same year, 2005, to over-ride an executive's proposal to cancel Mulcaire's £105,000 contract.

Mr Edis said: "You must have known. Who else would do it?"

"Well, the paper had a number of senior executives, not least the department heads themselves," the former editor replied.

Mr Coulson told the court: "I have no memory of being involved in it and I don't think I was involved in it."

Asked whether another senior journalist had taken the decision to keep paying Mulcaire, he said: "It's possible that [the other journalist] took the decision. It's possible that a number of other people did, too."

Mr Edis asked: "Were you incompetent at your job?".

Mr Coulson, who edited the NoW between 2003 and 2007, replied: "I don't think I was incompetent."

He, Rebekah Brooks, NoW editor between 2000 and 2003, and Stuart Kuttner, its long-serving managing editor, deny conspiring to hack phones.The case continues.