A cross-party committee of MPs abandoned plans to force the News International chief executive, Rebekah Brooks, to testify last year after they were warned that their private lives would be investigated, a former member alleged last night.

Adam Price, a former Plaid Cymru MP, told Channel 4 News that a group of committee members shied away from the "nuclear option" of issuing a warrant for Brooks to attend after a senior Tory warned that News International would "go for us".

Adrian Sanders, a Liberal Democrat member of the committee, said that the Tory chairman of the committee, John Whittingdale, had issued the warning. "The chairman himself had made some sort of allusion towards what could happen were we to go down this route. But there was no surprise in that because it was sort of, 'Well, yeh, we knew that from that beginning'."

Last night Whittingdale said he recalled a conversation with Price about the possible repercussions of issuing a warrant for Brooks but said that did not have any bearing on his decision and he did not believe News International would target committee members.

The allegation that News International attempted to interfere with the work of parliament came after Tom Watson, a Labour member of the committee, disclosed to MPs on Thursday that Brooks repeatedly refused to attend its hearings. "The chief executive of News International, Rebekah Brooks, was pursued on three separate occasions before we gave up," Watson said of the committee's attempts to persuade her to answer allegations that the News of the World encouraged the hacking of phones.

Brooks was summoned to give evidence for the committee's report, Press Standards, Privacy and Libel. Most of the hearings were held in early 2009. But a second round of hearings were held in the summer after fresh allegations about phone hacking were published by the Guardian in July 2009.

The committee was highly critical of News International, which said that the News of the World's former royal editor Clive Goodman, jailed for his role in phone hacking, was a rogue reporter. The committee accused Rupert Murdoch's company of "collective amnesia".

The committee said there was no evidence to prove that Andy Coulson, who resigned as editor of the News of the World after the jailing of Goodman, knew about the hacking. Coulson, now the Downing Street director of communications, denies any knowledge of the hacking.

Price told Channel 4 News last night that four members of the committee had considered asking the serjeant at arms to issue a warrant forcing Brooks to attend. He said: "We could have used the nuclear option. We decided not to, I think to some extent because of what I was told at the time by a senior Conservative member of the committee, who I know was in direct contact with executives at News International, that if we went for her, called her back, subpoenaed her, they would go for us. [This] meant effectively that they would delve into our personal lives in order to punish them and I think that's part of the reason we didn't do it." Watson told Channel 4 News that News International had further interfered by asking Downing Street to persuade him to tone down his questioning. "A [former Labour] cabinet minister has confirmed to me this week that News International talked to my former colleagues in No 10 Downing Street to ask them whether I would withdraw my aggressive line of questioning … I felt very frightened and intimidated." Watson added that he was told that Brooks vowed to destroy him after he led the Labour coup that persuaded Tony Blair to resign. "A very senior News International journalist told me at the Labour party conference in 2006, in the early hours of the morning, that his editor would never forgive me for resigning as a minister in Tony Blair's government and that she would pursue me for the rest of my political career until I was destroyed."

News International said: "Three News International executives appeared at the select committee and the company co-operated extensively with its investigation."