Piers Morgan “must have had knowledge of voicemail interception” and other unlawful information gathering techniques when he was editor of the Daily Mirror, it has been claimed at the high court.
Lawyers acting for alleged phone hacking victims made the accusation while seeking financial records relating to Morgan’s time in charge of the newspaper in the early 2000s.
They claim illegal techniques were used by individuals working for the Mirror during Morgan’s time as editor, including in relation to a story exposing Jeremy Clarkson for having an affair.
Morgan recently signed an enormous contract with Rupert Murdoch’s media empire worth tens of millions of pounds to be the face of the forthcoming talkTV channel. He has always strongly denied any knowledge of phone hacking at the Mirror and previously told the Guardian: “I’ve never hacked a phone nor told anybody to hack a phone.”
Yet the high court filings allege that, during Morgan’s time as editor, a Daily Mirror reporter had “been carrying out VMI [voicemail interception] on Mr Clarkson and trawling his phone bill” with the help of a private detective agency.
The lawyers allege this information was then used to help paparazzi photographers capture pictures of Clarkson with a woman who was not his wife, which were then published by Morgan in the Mirror. In legal filings, they insist that it was inconceivable that Morgan would not have known how the story about a prominent celebrity had been obtained.
One of their key sources is the Insider, Morgan’s own book about his time as Mirror editor: “Mr Morgan admitted in the Insider that he approached Mr Clarkson and must have known the origins of the story and the details of the UIG [unlawful information gathering] before he did so.”
The court filings also state that Southern Investigations, a private detective agency run by former police officers which was entwined in the case of the murder of Daniel Morgan, helped the Mirror with the Clarkson story. While Morgan was editor the private investigators issued an invoice for help contacting “confidential sources” for information on Clarkson.
In order to prove the accusations, the lawyers are seeking disclosure of what payments to private investigators, if any, were signed off by Morgan and Neil Wallis, the editor of sister title the Sunday People.
Although it is more than 15 years since the start of the phone hacking scandal, which led to the closure of Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World, cases continue to make their way through the court system.
Dozens of individuals, including the Duke of Sussex, are still filing new claims. Murdoch’s News UK and Reach, the publisher of the Mirror, have collectively paid out hundreds of millions of pounds in damages and costs since 2006.
