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David Cameron, the British prime minister, allowed his former spokesman, Andrew Coulson, access to some of the government’s most sensitive secrets without full security clearance, an inquiry has been told.

Asked on Thursday by Robert Jay, the lead lawyer for judge Brian Leveson, who heads the inquiry, whether he had any unsupervised access to information designated top secret, Coulson, former editor of the News of the World, said: “I may have done, yes.”

“Did you ever attend meetings of the national security council?” Jay asked about a body of senior politicians, defence and intelligence chiefs which is chaired by the prime minister.

“Yes,” Coulson said.

The Leveson inquiry heard that Coulson had been asked few questions by Cameron’s Conservative Party about his past and that the party did not carry out full security checks.

As a member of Her Majesty’s Press he clearly doesn’t need to be vetted, old boy.