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.