Britain's Prince Harry leaves the Royal Courts Of Justice. Photo / AP
The King is too “busy” to meet with his son during the Duke of Sussex’s surprise visit to London to attend a High Court hacking case against a newspaper publisher.
Prince Harry made an unannounced appearance in court on Monday to throw his weight behind a legal claim against the publisher of the Daily Mail over alleged unlawful information gathering.
He flew commercial from California to London this weekend to attend the four-day preliminary hearing and to demonstrate his “support”.
In an unusual show of force, he was joined in Court 76 by fellow claimants Sadie Frost, Sir Elton John, David Furnish and Baroness Doreen Lawrence, although they are not expected to participate in proceedings and were not required to attend. There was remote access for anyone wishing to join online.
The Duke is not expected to see his father during his brief visit as he was told the King was “busy”, even though his state visit to France - which was due to begin on Monday - had been cancelled three days earlier.
The monarch is understood to be at Highgrove, Gloucestershire preparing for the German leg of his tour, which begins on Wednesday. The Prince and Princess of Wales and their children have gone away for the school holidays.
The hearing would have coincided with the King’s state visit to France before the trip was cancelled on Friday owing to ongoing civil unrest over Emmanuel Macron’s pension reforms.
It will not have gone unnoticed at Buckingham Palace that the Duke’s appearance may have overshadowed the beginning of the tour, had it gone ahead.
Prince Harry entered the court via the main doors before making his way to the courtroom with a small security team and advisers shortly before 10.30am.
Dressed in a dark suit and tie, he sat in the body of the court and made notes in a small notebook, occasionally whispering to aides and using his phone to send messages.
The Duke is among seven high-profile figures who are suing Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL), publisher of the Daily Mail, the Mail on Sunday and MailOnline.
The other claimants are actresses Frost and Elizabeth Hurley, Sir Elton and Furnish, Baroness Doreen Lawrence and former Liberal Democrats MP Sir Simon Hughes.
In a joint statement released in October, the group said they had become aware of “compelling and highly distressing evidence that they have been the victims of abhorrent criminal activity and gross breaches of privacy”.
They claim the newspaper group “habitually utilised unlawful information gathering as part of the modus operandi of preparing stories” during the relevant period.
In court documents, they allege that journalists hired private investigators to put listening devices in homes and cars, listened in to phone calls, accessed bank records and financial information “through illicit means and manipulation” and commissioned the “breaking and entry into private property”.
The alleged activity ran from 1993 to 2011, and even up to 2018, lawyers said.
The publisher strenuously denies the allegations, which it has described as “preposterous smears” and a “pre-planned and orchestrated attempt to drag the Mail titles into the phone hacking scandal”.
ANL has applied to have the claims dismissed without a trial on two grounds. The first argues that the claims, many of which relate to events said to have taken place up to 30 years ago, have been brought too late and are “stale”.
The second alleges that the claimants’ use of information is in breach of a restriction order made by Lord Justice Leveson as it relates to documents - accounting ledgers - which were confidentially supplied by the Mail to the Leveson Inquiry 12 years ago.
Associated said that ministerial approval should have been sought before such documents could be used.
The claimants are all represented by David Sherborne, who had access to the information as a representative of core participants at the inquiry.
However, the barrister said they “heavily resisted” both applications, which he suggested were simply a time-wasting exercise to delay the trial.
In his particulars of claim, Prince Harry alleged that he and his associates were regularly targeted by private investigator Gavin Burrows, who “placed a hardwire tap” on his friend Guy Pelly’s phone and unlawfully gathered information about his then-girlfriend Chelsy Davy.
He said he was “horrified” that the publisher had so far avoided proper scrutiny “through its cover-up” and had behaved as if it was above the law, portraying itself as “a beacon of truth and integrity”.
He accused the newspaper group of largely depriving him of important aspects of his teenage years by causing him to lose or cut off friends due to suspicion and paranoia.
Its pursuit of detail concerning his private travel plans also caused him a “significant security risk” he claimed, and was “as grossly irresponsible as it was dangerous”.
The Duke said that ANL’s behaviour amounted to “a major betrayal”, given promises made by the media to improve its conduct following the death of his mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997.
His claim concerns a period “from at least as early as 2001 until at least as late [as] 2013 and beyond”.
Burrows is alleged to have provided evidence for the celebrities’ lawyers in 2021, but has now given a signed witness statement “denying that he was commissioned or instructed by Associated to carry out any unlawful activity”, the court was told.
The Duke, who was in London for the first time since the late Queen’s funeral and the publication of his memoir, Spare, is thought to be the first senior royal to appear in court since Anne, Princess Royal pleaded guilty to a charge under the Dangerous Dogs Act in 2002.
He has turned his fight against the media into something of a personal crusade in recent years, taking multiple legal actions against several newspaper groups.
In his memoir, he refers to “a dreadful mob of dweebs and crones and cut-rate criminals and clinically diagnosable sadists along Fleet Street”.
In an ITV interview broadcast in January to promote the book, he was questioned by journalist Tom Bradby about the wisdom of taking on the Mail.
Bradby said: “The stakes I would say are very high, you’re suggesting, you know, they [the Mail] hired private investigators to break into people’s houses to plant a listening device. I mean, this is off the scale, they deny it absolutely. Let’s be clear, you would owe them a pretty abject apology if you’re not right.”
The Prince replied, “Well if it wasn’t … they would presumably sue us”, adding: “Who’s policing them?”
The court also heard that Sir Elton and his husband Furnish had not seen a copy of their first child’s birth certificate before it was unlawfully obtained by journalists.
Sherborne said: “They were heartbroken by the derogatory headline that Associated attached to it, clearly calculated to profit and generate public sensation about an event that they had so carefully guarded to keep precious.
“The fact that these unlawful articles, which carry so much upset, were founded through unlawful acts that were all the time deliberately concealed from them has enraged them.”
The couple’s landline at their home in Windsor was allegedly tapped by a private investigator on the instructions of ANL, while their gardener and Sir Elton’s personal assistant were also targeted.
They were said to have been “mortified to consider all their conversations, some of which were very personal indeed, were tapped, taped, packaged and consumed as a commercial product for journalists and unknown others to pick over, regardless of whether or not they were published”.
Sherborne added: “The hurt remains the same, knowing that their lives have been treated as a commodity and their precious, priceless moments of privacy degraded in this way.”
Meanwhile, similar feelings of “deep anger” were prompted by the experience of their close friend Elizabeth Hurley and her son, their godson, when he was a baby and they stayed at their Windsor home.
“They considered it a safe, inviolable place for her,” Sherborne said.
“It has devastated them to learn that this was not the case, that the lines of their Windsor home were tapped by private investigators acting on the instruction of Associated, and Elizabeth Hurley’s conversations taped and exploited.”
The court was also told that a private investigator acting on behalf of ANL hacked Ms Hurley’s phone, placed a “sticky window mini-microphone” outside her home and bugged ex-boyfriend Hugh Grant’s car to unlawfully obtain information about her finances, travel plans and medicals during her pregnancy.
Sherborne said the actress was left “shocked and mortified” by her alleged targeting.
Frost claims that her phones were hacked and her landline tapped in order to obtain stories.
She said her ex-husband Jude Law’s landline was also tapped, including on one occasion when he was having a conversation with a male member of his family to discuss the details of their divorce settlement.
Sir Simon alleged that ANL paid a private investigator to unlawfully find the address of a man (identified as HJK) it believed was his male lover.
Sherborne said in written submissions that “the Mail on Sunday wanted a photograph of HJK (and the claimant) in order to be able to publish a story about their relationship”.
ANL also made an application, which was granted by the judge, to anonymise the 73 journalists named in the particulars of claims until it is decided whether or not the claims should proceed.
Catrin Evans KC, acting for ANL, successfully argued there was no justification for the publication of the journalists’ names at this stage. She told the court that publication of the names could cause “immense reputational damage” to the 73 individuals who worked for the Mail and invade their privacy.
It is not yet known whether Prince Harry and his wife Meghan will attend the King’s Coronation in May, although they have been invited.
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