Prince Harry case: Duke of Sussex claims phone hacking was on an 'industrial scale' at Mirror titles

The Duke of Sussex has arrived at the High Court to give evidence in his claim against Mirror Group Newspapers.

Harry arrived outside the Rolls Building in central London at 9.36am in a black Range Rover, wearing a black suit.

He walked into the building without answering reporters’ questions before passing security checks inside.

Although Prince Harry gets compared to his great-granduncle Prince Edward VIII due to their similarities in finding love with an American lady and moving away from 'The Firm', it just so happens that the latter’s grandfather Edward VII was the last royal to give evidence in court in the 1890s.

Edward VII appeared in court twice as a witness before he was crowned King; firstly to provide evidence in a 1870 divorce settlement when he was accused of having an affair with a British lawmaker’s wife, prior to a slander trial in 1891 over a card game.

Read more from our sister title PeopleWorld.

While Harry did not appear expected, there were several revelations from the first day of the case on Monday:

Read our recap on day one.

Holding a Bible in his right hand while standing up, Prince Harry repeated after a court clerk the oath: “I swear by almighty God that the evidence I shall give shall be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”

Andrew Green KC, representing MGN, then began his cross-examination of the duke.

He apologised to the duke in person on behalf of MGN, repeating the publisher’s “unreserved apology” to him at the outset of the trial for one instance of unlawful activity.

He said: “MGN unreservedly apologises to you for that, it should never have happened and it will never happen again.”

Mr Green told Harry that, if the judge finds that MGN was responsible for any further acts of unlawful information gathering, “you will be entitled to, and will receive, a more extensive apology”.

In his witness statement, Prince Harry said it was “no secret that I have had, and continue to have, a very difficult relationship with the tabloid press in the UK”.

He continued: “In my experience as a member of the royal family, each of us gets cast into a specific role by the tabloid press. You start off as a blank canvas while they work out what kind of person you are and what kind of problems and temptations you might have. They then start to edge you towards playing the role or roles that suit them best and which sells as many newspapers as possible, especially if you are the ‘spare’ to the ‘heir’.

“You’re then either the ‘playboy prince’, the ‘failure’, the ‘dropout’ or, in my case, the ‘thicko’, the ‘cheat’, the ‘underage drinker’, the ‘irresponsible drug taker’, the list goes on.

“As a teenager and in my early 20s, I ended up feeling as though I was playing up to a lot of the headlines and stereotypes that they wanted to pin on me mainly because I thought that, if they are printing this rubbish about me and people were believing it, I may as well ‘do the crime’, so to speak.

“It was a downward spiral, whereby the tabloids would constantly try and coax me, a ‘damaged’ young man, into doing something stupid that would make a good story and sell lots of newspapers.

“Looking back on it now, such behaviour on their part is utterly vile.”

Under cross examination from Andrew Green KC, Harry said: “I’ve experienced hostility from the press since I was born.”

Harry was questioned about his attitude towards the media, and asked if had a “long-standing” hostility towards it.

“Yes, that’s correct,” the duke said.

Mr Green asked if this hostility had pre-dated the discovery that unlawful methods had been used by some of the press.

The duke replied: “Yes… because the unlawful methods were hidden from me as well as everybody else.”

He added that it “certainly shocked me”.

In his witness statement, Harry described the impact the press had on his life: “Every time I was getting off a plane or jumping in a car, I was looking in the rear-view mirror so to speak. I came to expect to be followed and papped by someone hiding in a bush somewhere. Everything felt as though I was under 24-hour surveillance."

He also described how, when he was on a trip to Australia in his gap year in 2003, his grandmother the late Queen secretly sent one of her aides to stay nearby without him knowing in case he needed support because of press coverage.

“I only learnt recently that the Queen had asked one of her assistant private secretaries to fly out to Noosa and take a house down the road from where I was staying, without me knowing,” Harry said.

“She was concerned about the extent of the coverage of my trip and wanted someone I knew to be nearby, in case I needed support.”

The Duke of Sussex said the alleged unlawful actions of MGN journalists “affected every area of my life”.

He said: “My voicemails would include incredibly private and sensitive information about my relationships, my operational security and that of my family, my work both in the army and as a senior member of the royal family, and also any plans that I had made for my time off including holidays and downtime with friends. They would also include incredibly private and sensitive information about those with whom I associated.”

Harry added: “I remember on multiple occasions hearing a voicemail for the first time that wasn’t ‘new’, but I don’t remember thinking that it was particularly unusual – I would simply put it down to perhaps a technical glitch, as mobile phones were still relatively new back then, or even just having too many drinks the night before, and having forgotten that I’d listened to it.”

Harry said that he now believes that both his and his associates' voicemail messages were hacked by MGN, and that it also used “other unlawful means” to obtain private information.

He continued: "The fact that the defendant’s journalists and those instructed on their behalf were listening in to private and sensitive voicemails at the level of detail discussed in this statement rather suggests that they could have heard anything and everything.

“This not only creates a huge amount of distress but presented very real security concerns for not only me but also everyone around me. I would say their actions affected every area of my life.”

MGN's lawyer, Andrew Green KC, asked Harry about part of his witness statement where he stated: “How much more blood will stain their typing fingers before someone can put a stop to this madness.”

Mr Green asked if the duke was referring to a specific article, and what he meant by the comments.

Harry responded: “Some of the editors and journalists that are responsible for causing a lot of pain, upset and in some cases, speaking personally, death.”

He then said his reference to “blood on their hands” was “more broadly towards the press” in general, adding: “I haven’t named the journalists in that particular paragraph.”

Harry spoke of 135 separate payments to private investigators related to him - and a further 154 for his associates.

He said it had greatly impacted his relationships. “I was upset to discover the amount of suspicious call data and the 13 private investigator payments for Chelsy [Davy, his ex-girlfriend)].

“Had she not been in a relationship with me, she would never have had to endure such a horrific experience at the hands of MGN’s journalists," he said.

In his written witness statement, Harry referenced a story from November 2007 which appeared in the Irish edition of the Sunday Mirror and reported details of the duke’s relationship with his then-girlfriend.

He wrote: “It reported that Chelsy and I had a ‘secret meeting’ where I had ‘begged her for a second chance’... These kinds of articles made me feel as though my relationship with Chelsy was always set to be doomed.

“We couldn’t even meet in private or have arguments over the telephone without the defendant somehow learning these details and publishing them for the whole country to see.

Harry said Chelsy had found it particularly difficult while she lived in England.

The Duke of Sussex also said that he felt “physically sick” to learn there were eight payments to private investigators in relation to his late mother, Diana, Princess of Wales.

In his witness statement, the Duke of Sussex described an infamous incident with a paparazzi photographer in October 2004.

Harry, then 20, was accused of lashing out at the photographer in a scuffle outside a nightclub, and photos of the incident appeared in the press.

He said: “This was a particularly challenging period of my youth. I had just turned 20, and like most 20 year-olds, I wanted to go out and socialise. However, everywhere I went, the paparazzi seemed to turn up.

“As I reached the car, I could hear taunting. I was being egged on for a reaction, knowing I’d been out and had a few drinks," he continued.

“A camera hit me across my nose as I was opening the door, I turned, grabbed the nearest camera to me and shoved it backwards.”

Harry said he was taken back to Clarence House afterwards and then “on to see a doctor”.

The duke said “everyone” in the family including now-King Charles, was "sympathetic to the position I was in".

"There was no respite, never an ‘off’ moment when I was allowed to go out with my friends without the intrusion and harassment.”

In his witness statement, the Duke of Sussex referred to a 2003 article detailing an alleged row between him and his brother William, over their mother’s former butler Paul Burrell - who they claim sold Diana's secrets after her death.

He said he would have used the phrase “two-face s***” to describe him as reported, and believed it was lifted directly from a voicemail he had left.

The Duke he faced questions from faced MGN lawyer Mr Green about claims in his witness statement that the publisher's alleged intrusion into his life contributed to “a huge amount of paranoia”.

Mr Green asked Harry how he had such feelings if he was not aware of articles published in relation to him at the time.

The Duke said he would be “speculating” if he said which articles he had read and which he had not. “In my experience, the vast majority of the quotes were attributed to a pal, a friend, a source, an onlooker, which actually creates more suspicion”.

But he said he started to re-examine articles when he “realised information had been unlawfully obtained”.

Mr Green also asked him: “Is it realistic, when you have been the subject of so much press intrusion by so many press, both domestic and international, to attribute specific distress to a particular article from 20 years ago, which you may not have seen at the time?”

Harry replied: “As I said earlier, it isn’t a specific article, it is all of the articles.... Every single article has caused me distress,” to which Mr Green then asked if each individual article published by MGN had caused him distress.

Harry replied: “Yes, without question.”

Harry has said much of his young life had been "wasted on this paranoia" - which he attributed to the actions of MGN's journalists - and said he believed his late mother suffered the same way.

His friend circle shrunk, he said, as he began to distrust those around him. “It’s bad enough at any age, but looking back, 18 years old is so young to feel constantly suspicious of everyone around you.”

“I’ve always heard people refer to my mother as paranoid, but she wasn’t," the Duke continued.

“She was fearful of what was actually happening to her and now I know that I was the same.”

MGN lawyer Andrew Green questioned the duke about a Daily Mirror article publisher in September 1996 entitled “Diana so sad on Harry’s big day”.

The court heard that Harry had complained about the article, which was about his feelings on his parents' divorce, and the ill health of a family friend.

The barrister said the duke was first issued with a mobile phone when he went to Eton in 1998 - putting it to Harry that the 1996 article could not have involved phone hacking.

But Harry said his security at school had a separate landline for him, which he used to call his mother "in floods of tears". How they got their information for the story seemed "incredibly suspicious”, he said.

Harry also said it could have been his mother who was hacked, but Mr Green replied “that’s just speculation you’ve come up with now”.

Mr Green said the article reported that Harry at the time was “believed to be taking the royal divorce badly”, and put it to the duke that his mother had already spoken publicly about the split.

“I don’t believe she talked about it, I believe she answered questions,” Harry replied.

Mr Green said there had been reporting by the Press Association months earlier on the young duke’s feelings towards the divorce.

In his witness statement, Harry referred to an article in The People from 2002 with the headline “Plot to rob the DNA of Harry” which reported a bid to steal a sample of his DNA to verify his parentage.

“Numerous newspapers had reported a rumour that my biological father was James Hewitt, a man my mother had a relationship with after I was born,” Harry said. “At the time of this article and others similar to it, I wasn’t actually aware that my mother hadn’t met Major Hewitt until after I was born.”

He said he learnt of this timeline in 2014 but claimed it was common knowledge amongst the defendant’s journalists.

“At the time, when I was 18 years old and had lost my mother just six years earlier, stories such as this felt very damaging and very real to me,” the duke said.

“They were hurtful, mean and cruel. I was always left questioning the motives behind the stories... Were the newspapers keen to put doubt into the minds of the public so I might be ousted from the royal family?”

Prince Harry has wrapped up his witness statement. His closing remarks took aim at the UK's press, and government.

“In my view, in order to save journalism as a profession, journalists need to expose those people in the media that have stolen or highjacked the privileges and powers of the press, and have used illegal or unlawful means for their own gain and agendas.

“In the same vein, I am bringing this claim, not because I hate the tabloid press or even necessarily a section of it, but in order to properly hold the people who have hijacked those privileges, which come with being a member of the press, to account for their actions.

“This has become a huge problem of which I have a unique perspective and experience perhaps, having had a front row seat to it. Because they have showed no willingness to change, I feel that I need to make sure that this unlawful behaviour is exposed, because obviously I don’t want anybody else going through the same thing that I’ve been going through on a personal level.

“But also, on a national level as, at the moment, our country is judged globally by the state of our press and our Government, both of which I believe are at rock bottom.

“Democracy fails when your press fails to scrutinise and hold the Government accountable, and instead choose to get into bed with them so they can ensure the status quo.”

Politician Nigel Farage is one of a number of Brits on social media, who are questioning whether Prince Harry's comment that the government was at rock bottom during his media trial was "playing politics":

In response to questions from lawyer Andrew Green about why Harry has complained of the Mirror group's articles when other media outlets had published the same information, the duke said his understanding was that MGN journalists were using unlawful methods to get “exclusive” angles.

He said he understood one of the PI companies used by MGN was “regularly used and connected to phone hacking”.

The duke said his understanding came from his legal team or “through legal paperwork”, including private investigator invoices, he had seen.

He said in some instances he had been shown it was “not the invoices themselves but the company behind the invoices”. Asked further about invoice evidence, Harry said: “Again, that is a question for my legal team, I can only go on what I know.”

He added that private investigator invoices from around the time of articles were “highly suspicious”, adding: “As well as missed calls and other dropped calls before and after and around the time of these articles themselves.”

The duke said the “competitiveness of newspapers” meant journalists were told “to go and find a different version of that story” or an exclusive angle.

Asked whether he was basing his complaints about MGN articles on invoices, he said: “My understanding is that during this period the hacking was done on burner phones so there is no call data and most of the evidence has been destroyed, so I have little to go on.”