Prince Harry’s victory against the Daily Mirror has placed phone hacking and media standards back under the spotlight, 11 years after the conclusion of the Leveson inquiry.
While millions of pounds have been paid out to victims of phone hacking in the intervening years, they were largely via out-of-court settlements, which kept a lid on the reputational damage to the perpetrators.
But the Duke of Sussex’s determination to have his day in court – “slaying dragons” as he put it – will cause nervousness in newspaper offices, not least Associated Newspapers Ltd (ANL).
Having put Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) to the sword, next on his list is the proprietor of the Daily Mail, in a trial next year alleging unlawful information-gathering, in which Elton John and Doreen Lawrence will be among those riding into battle alongside the duke.
ANL will not want to suffer a damning indictment of its culture of the type Mr Justice Fancourt handed to MGN.
ANL has denied what it described as “the lurid claims made by Prince Harry and others of phone hacking, landline tapping, burglary and sticky-window microphones”, saying they were “simply preposterous”.
Attempts elsewhere to downplay phone hacking and other illegal practices have often sought to characterise them as the work of a few bad apples and portrayed them as a relic of the past. However, executives, editors and journalists at MGN all came in for criticism in Fancourt’s judgment, which was so excoriating that pleading the passage of time in mitigation may not wash.
Among the most significant parts of the judgment were those that found that MGN was engaged in phone hacking while the Leveson inquiry was going on and that it concealed its use of private investigators from the inquiry (as well as parliament, the courts and shareholders).
The findings have led the likes of Harry and the campaign group, Hacked Off, to call for criminal investigations. Hacked Off, its former director Evan Harris, and others have also called for them to be the catalyst for Leveson part two to rise from the ashes. While the first part of the inquiry looked at the culture, practices and ethics of the press, part two was meant to be an investigation into the relationship between journalists and the police but was cancelled by the Conservative government.
Alastair Campbell said on social media that the MGN judgment “underlines the political error in going soft on the Leveson recommendations and not even allowing him to complete his work”. The Tory government also announced it was repealing a rule – known as section 40 – designed to force news publishers to sign up to the government-backed regulator, which was one of the main recommendations of the Leveson inquiry but has never taken effect.
Labour previously supported Leveson part two, pledging in its 2019 general election manifesto that it would “address misconduct and the unresolved failures of corporate governance raised by the second stage of the abandoned Leveson inquiry”.
But under Keir Starmer’s leadership it has remained silent on the issue and it is unlikely it would have the appetite for a battle with the very news organisations it is hoping to woo, not to mention the parlous state of the finances it will probably inherit if it does get in, which will further dampen its appetite for resurrecting the inquiry.
Labour gained a small taste of the backlash it could expect if it did so when it indicated that it would oppose the repeal of the section 40 law, which would mean any news organisation that has not signed up to the regulator would have to pay the legal costs of any libel trial it faces, unless a judge ruled otherwise, even if it won. However, it has since backed away from that position, which had put it in opposition to nearly every national news organisation.
Despite the significance of Harry’s victory, the lack of political appetite for reform makes change seem unlikely. But, as he concluded his statement: “The mission continues.”
