Prince Harry should receive only £500 in damages at the end of his phone-hacking trial, Mirror Group Newspapers has argued at the high court.
The Duke of Sussex wants a judge to award him more than £200,000 over allegations that he was the victim of illegal activity by journalists working for the Mirror, the Sunday Mirror and the People.
Earlier this month, he became the first royal in 130 years to give evidence in a court case, telling the high court that there was “hard evidence” he had been illegally targeted. He said he did not believe the Mirror’s denials because “my whole life the press have misled me” in order to cover up their wrongdoing.
Mirror Group Newspapers said they had “enormous sympathy” for the prince’s experience of media intrusion but said he had no evidence he was the victim of phone hacking or widespread illegal activity by its newspapers.
The publisher accepted that on one occasion a journalist at the People paid £75 to a private investigator to illegally obtain information about Harry’s visit to the London VIP nightclub Chinawhite in 2004. They said the small sum suggested the “inquiries were limited” and have suggested the judge awards the prince just £500 compensation as a result.
Andrew Green KC, the publisher’s barrister, used his closing submission in the six-week trial to argue that Harry’s complaint “is against general intrusion by the entire media” and the prince did not have specific evidence of wrongdoing by the Mirror’s titles.
The lawyer said the Mirror had hacked the voicemails of many celebrities during the 2000s and paid substantial damages to them – but had no evidence that its reporters had targeted Harry’s phone.
Green also said many of the stories about Harry that were supposedly obtained illegally were either “trivial”, or were provided by legitimate sources such as palace spokespeople, meaning Harry had no expectation of privacy.
Harry is known to have had his phone hacked by Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World and is bringing two separate phone-hacking cases against the publisher of the Sun and the publisher of the Daily Mail.
David Sherborne, Harry’s barrister, pointed out that many potential witnesses – including the former Mirror editor Piers Morgan – had not been called to give evidence: “It’s not so much Hamlet without the prince of Denmark, it’s Hamlet without the entire royal court.”
On Tuesday, the judge, Mr Justice Fancourt, asked whether he would be expected to rule on whether Morgan, who has always denied commissioning phone hacking, knew about illegal behaviour by his journalists.
The prince’s case is just one part of a wider trial relating to phone hacking at Mirror Group Newspapers. The trial is scheduled to finish on Friday, with a judgment expected in the autumn.
