Prince Harry has no evidence he was the victim of phone hacking by Mirror journalists, the high court has heard, with stories about his private life instead secretly leaked by royal press officers.
The Duke of Sussex alleges that dozens of news stories published in the Daily Mirror, the Sunday Mirror and People were obtained through phone hacking or other illegal behaviour. The articles – published between 1995 and 2011 – detail his relationship with his family, his relationship with ex-girlfriend Chelsy Davy, his military service and allegations of drug use.
He alleges this behaviour was condoned by senior executives such as Piers Morgan.
Mirror Group Newspapers has accepted that on one occasion it employed a private investigator to illegally gather information on Harry. But it insists that most of its stories were obtained legally and says the prince has “no basis” to claim his voicemails were hacked by Mirror journalists.
Andrew Green KC, the company’s barrister, said that just because other celebrities had their phones hacked by Mirror journalists, it does not mean that Harry was targeted in this manner. He said the evidence offered by the prince is either “slim” or “utterly nonexistent”.
Instead, the newspaper publisher suggests that its stories about Harry came from confidential sources, friends of the prince and royal press officers.
In one instance, Harry claims an article published when Morgan was Daily Mirror editor about the teenage prince catching glandular fever, entitled “Harry’s sick with kissing disease”, must have been obtained illegally.
The Mirror’s lawyers claim that the real source of the story was probably King Charles’s former press chief Mark Bolland, who had a strong personal relationship with Morgan “involving regular calls, meals and drinking sessions together”. The newspaper group implies that Harry should blame his father’s aides for intruding upon his privacy rather than journalists.
The company said that when the Metropolitan police discovered the News of the World reporter Clive Goodman had hacked Prince Harry’s phone in 2006, the police would have noticed if Mirror journalists had also been listening to royal voicemails.
“No Mirror Group Newspapers journalists were arrested or prosecuted, suggesting that Mirror Group Newspapers was not engaging in voicemail interception of the Duke of Sussex and those around him,” the company said.
Harry is one of four individuals whose phone-hacking claims against the Mirror publisher are being tested in a seven-week trial at the high court. The Mirror is disputing their specific allegations of phone hacking, while also arguing that the claimants missed a legal deadline to start their claims.
David Sherborne, the barrister for Harry and the other alleged victims, told the court that there had been widespread illegal behaviour at the Mirror’s newspapers. He alleged that senior executives, including Morgan, must have known about tactics ranging from phone hacking to landline tapping and the blagging of private financial records.
“We have the direct involvement of Mr Morgan in a number of these incidents and his knowledge of voicemail interception,” Sherborne previously told the court.
Morgan has denied that he ever knowingly published stories based on phone hacking.
One of the trial’s core issues is the use of private investigators to carry out illegal activity on behalf of journalists. The court has already heard allegations that, when Morgan was editor, the Daily Mirror employed an external agency to obtain Prince Michael of Kent’s financial details. The private investigator allegedly phoned Coutts bank and convinced them to hand over the prince’s private details by pretending to be the prince’s accountant.
Mirror Group Newspapers spent millions of pounds on external private investigators during the 2000s but said in many cases the third parties provided “expertise” in obtaining legally available material from public registers.
Mirror Group Newspapers has already paid about £100m in penalties and legal fees to settle hundreds of phone-hacking claims at its titles, in addition to setting aside a further £50m to cover future payouts.
The first three weeks of the trial will deal with general issues around alleged illegal behaviour at the Mirror’s three newspapers, while the second half will hear evidence from the four alleged victims.
Prince Harry is due to give evidence to the trial over three days at the start of June, becoming the first royal to give evidence from the witness box since the 19th century.
