Lawyers representing Prince Harry and six other major figures have accused the publisher of the Daily Mail of “clear, systematic and sustained use of unlawful information gathering” to secure stories about them via The Guardian.
In a witness statement submitted to the court, the Duke of Sussex has accused the newspaper group of subjecting him to “intrusion [that] was terrifying” for loved ones, creating a “massive strain” on his personal relationships. He said it had the effect of “driv[ing] me paranoid beyond belief, isolating me”.
Harry was in the High Court for the beginning of the case against Associated Newspapers Ltd, publisher of the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday. It is his latest and final claim against newspaper publishers over alleged unlawful techniques.
Prince Harry is among a group of prominent individuals taking legal action against the newspaper group. This group also features Doreen Lawrence, mother of Stephen Lawrence, who was murdered in a racist attack over 30 years ago. Sir Elton John and his husband, David Furnish, along with actors Elizabeth Hurley and Sadie Frost, and former Liberal Democrat MP Simon Hughes are included. Harry, Hurley, Frost, and Hughes attended court at the trial’s opening.
In written submissions to the court, the claimants’ legal team said alleged unlawful acts included using private investigators to illegally intercept voicemail messages, listening in to live landline calls, and obtaining private information such as itemised phone bills or medical records by deception, known as “blagging”.
Opening the trial at the High Court, the claimants’ barrister David Sherborne said the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday had “skeletons in their closet” over the use of unlawful information gathering. He said the alleged acts involved “journalists from both the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday and every significant editorial desk” over two decades.
He said that he would demonstrate a “clear, systematic and sustained use of unlawful information gathering at both the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday”.
“There is evidence, indisputable evidence, in the documents that Associated journalists and senior executives were commissioning and approving the acquisition and use of unlawfully obtained information, and they must have known that,” he said. “That is why we say this was no clean ship, far from it.”
Sherborne said that repeated claims by Associated Newspapers that it was not involved in unlawful information gathering, including during the Leveson inquiry into the practices of the press, “were not true”. Sherborne said Associated Newspapers had adopted a “hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil defence”.
The claimants alleged that the activities took place between 1993 and 2011, “even continuing beyond until 2018, and even beyond the specific articles that deployed the fruits of this wrongdoing and unlawful episodes”.
“There can be little doubt that journalists and executives across the Mail titles engaged in or were complicit in the culture of unlawful information gathering that wrecked the lives of so many,” their written submission states.
The claimants will refer to 14 individuals who were private investigators or carried out activities similar to a private investigator.
However, Sherborne also complained that a massive amount of material had been destroyed. He said there were “masses” of missing documents, including the “mass destruction” of emails before 2004. Associated has argued this was down to a company email deletion policy.
Sherborne alleged Associated Newspapers “knew they had skeletons in their closet” because it had investigated the use of phone hacking between 2003 and 2005, before the Leveson inquiry took place.
