Former prime minister's feud with Rupert Murdoch's empire deepened as he summoned Scotland Yard to investigate his allegations that The Sun and The Sunday Times had illegally accessed his bank accounts, legal files and tax details.
Friends of Mr Brown had also alleged that The Sun hacked into his son Fraser's medical records in order to obtain evidence of his cystic fibrosis – a claim the tabloid strongly denied.
On Saturday night he made the unusual step of releasing a confidential email sent to him by The Sunday Times, a sign of his determination to escalate the conflict with a paper he had accused of having links with "the criminal underworld".
Mr Brown said: "An email from The Sunday Times seeks, among other things, to manufacture claims which were never made and to distort those that were. The letter is being referred to the police.
"Unsurprisingly much of the letter attempts to diminish the culpability of News International for their methods of acquiring information.
They have yet to reveal all the names of those who provided the information for The Sunday Times stories and how it was acquired; and who was paid and how much?"
Last week, Mr Brown accused The Sunday Times of hiring a "blagger" who posed as him six times in a successful attempt to get his bank details from Abbey National.
An internal investigation by the bank in January 2000 concluded that someone had called its Bradford call centre acting as the then chancellor.
He said: 'An email from The Sunday Times seeks, among other things, to manufacture claims which were never made and to distort those that were. The letter is being referred to the police.
'Unsurprisingly much of the letter attempts to diminish the culpability of News International for their methods of acquiring information.'
Mr Brown had earlier complained about a story regarding his son Fraser's health that appeared in another News International publication, The Sun.
The tabloid denied claims made in other papers that it had accessed confidential medical records as a source for the article and both The Guardian and Daily Telegraph subsequently printed apologies.
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