Missing private investigator evidence in Daily Mail’s case ‘stark’, high court told

The leading barrister for the claimants said the court should conclude ‘the true scale’ of unlawful information gathering ‘was enormous’. Photograph: Hannah McKay/Reuters

The amount of lost or destroyed documents relating to the Daily Mail publisher’s use of private investigators is “stark in the extreme”, the high court has heard.

However, the thin surviving evidence of payments to private investigators contains “conspicuous and often shocking evidence”, according to lawyers for a group of claimants accusing the publisher of using unlawful techniques.