Prince Harry has claimed members of the royal family struck a secret deal with newspapers not to sue them over phone hacking because it would “open a can of worms”.
Harry alleged his own family hid information from him about press intrusion and he had been conditioned to accept his family’s view that they should not dare to take on the British newspaper industry.
In documents filed to the high court, he said there was a private arrangement between the royal family, which he calls “the Institution”, and Rupert Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers (NGN), which publishes the Sun.
Harry claimed: “There was in place an agreement between the Institution and NGN that we would not engage, or even discuss, the possibility of bringing claims against NGN until the litigation against it relating to phone hacking was over.
“The Institution made it clear that we did not need to know anything about phone hacking and it was made clear to me that the royal family did not sit in the witness box because that could open up a can of worms.
“The Institution was without a doubt withholding information from me for a long time about NGN’s phone hacking and that has only become clear in recent years as I have pursued my own claim with different legal advice and representation.”
In addition to claims against NGN and the publisher of the Mirror, Harry is now bringing a claim against Associated Newspapers, the publisher of the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday.
He alleges the company’s newspapers targeted him through a variety of illegal means including voicemail interception, tapping of landline phones, and inappropriately obtaining credit card records.
Harry said he decided to sue Associated Newspapers because “if the most influential newspaper company can successfully evade justice, then in my opinion the whole country is doomed”.
In the witness statement, Harry added: “I am bringing this claim because I love my country and I remain deeply concerned by the unchecked power, influence and criminality of Associated.
“The evidence I have seen shows that Associated’s journalists are criminals with journalistic powers which should concern every single one of us. The British public deserve to know the full extent of this cover up and I feel it is my duty to expose it.”
He said reports in the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday about his private life had caused him immense grief and paranoia as a young man, citing an article about a little known girlfriend from his Eton days called Laura Gerard-Leigh.
“It led to Laura’s parents being doorstepped which they were understandably not pleased about. This sort of thing caused me to try and keep matters as private as I could to avoid this happening.”
Harry is one of seven individuals bringing cases against the publisher of the Mail, claiming the group’s newspapers regularly broke the law to obtain stories.
Associated Newspapers has described the claims as “preposterous smears” and a “pre-planned and orchestrated attempt to drag the Mail titles into the phone-hacking scandal”.
They said the evidence was based on “unsubstantiated and highly defamatory claims, based on no credible evidence.”
Harry was present in court for a second day in central London to hear technical arguments about how certain information had been obtained by his legal team.
Witness statements from other claimants – who include Doreen Lawrence, Elton John, Liz Hurley and Sadie Frost – also set out allegations of illegality at Associated Newspapers and the hurt they had caused. Associated has dismissed all the claims as “preposterous smears”.
Elton John told the court he believed the Mail was “inhumane” and claimed it had dug up his personal medical records, as well as obtaining the birth certificate of his son Zachary – something he said was “abhorrent and outside even the most basic standards of human decency”.
John said: “I have devoted my life to my music but this does not mean deeply personal things which I have to deal with in private are fair game … The fact they did this to our son Zachary when he was a baby, just born, shows just how little integrity and morality exists within this newspaper group.”
Doreen Lawrence’s lawyer Imran Khan KC said his client felt betrayed by the Mail, who had previously campaigned on behalf of her murdered son Stephen. He said Doreen Lawrence had found the Mail’s duplicity to be “breathtaking and beyond comprehension, even after all the inhumanity we have witnessed since the night Stephen was killed”.
Sadie Frost said her ex-husband Jude Law believed she was leaking information to newspapers about her divorce, while she now alleges this was due to illegal interception of information. Liz Hurley said she objected to “Stasi-like surveillance” by the media.
On Tuesday the court heard arguments over whether confidential evidence provided to the Leveson inquiry by Associated Newspapers could now be used by the claimants in the case.
The Mail, which is attempting to have the claims struck out, argued the material – showing payments to private investigators – should not admissible because the data was provided to the public inquiry with a guarantee of confidentiality.
Another witness, the former private investigator Steve Whittamore, said he was paid hundreds of thousands of pounds to provide illegally obtained information to the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday: “It irked me to watch the Leveson inquiry and hear executives and senior figures from the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday deny that their reporters and editors knew what they were asking me to do was unlawful. I know they did.”
He said a number of those journalists who used his services and who knew the information he provided for their stories had been obtained unlawfully “are still in senior positions at Associated’s newspapers”.
Adrian Beltrami KC, representing Associated Newspapers, told the court that another private detective relied on by the claimants had now provided a signed witness statement “denying that he was commissioned or instructed by Associated to carry out any unlawful activity”.
