Judge troubled by ‘disparities’ in Harry’s story of secret deal

There seem to be ‘factual inconsistencies’ in the legal claim brought by the Duke about allegedly being a phone hacking victim.

Prince Harry outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London last month. Picture: Getty Images

There appear to be “factual inconsistencies” in the legal claim brought by the Duke of Sussex about allegedly being a victim of phone hacking, a High Court judge said yesterday.

Mr Justice Fancourt is concerned about Prince Harry’s new claims of a secret deal by the royal family that he says prevented him bringing the case earlier.

Harry, 38, has accused the late Queen Elizabeth of being involved in an agreement with the publisher of The Sun and the News of the World.

He says his brother, the Prince of Wales, secretly accepted a “very large sum” of compensation from the publisher in 2020. The Duke’s suggestion that the King and his grandmother were complicit with a cover-up of the alleged hacking of the princes came less than two weeks before the coronation.

Charles and Harry pictured in 2019. Picture: Samir Hussein/WireImage

Fancourt questioned why Harry’s legal claim filed in 2020 and updated last year failed to include details of the alleged secret deal, which he argues means the publisher accepted that it would not try to block his compensation claim because it was too old.

The judge added: “Another thing that is troubling is what appears to be a factual inconsistency in the current pleaded cases that the Duke of Sussex did not have the knowledge [of the alleged wrongdoing] before 2019 and your proposed amendment seems to say he would have brought the claim in 2012 but for the secret agreement.”

Harry’s barrister, David Sherborne, said the claim in 2012 would have been “totally different”. The judge replied: “I am talking about the factual inconsistencies in the case as pleaded.”

Sherborne said Harry was not aware until 2012 of the deal not to pursue the publisher until the conclusion of other legal action relating to phone hacking. “This is not criticism of the [late] Queen or his family, that is the way it was done and he accepted it, he had to,” added the barrister.

Harry claims the agreement was designed to avoid a repeat of the “reputational damage” caused in 1993 by publication of an intimate conversation between the King, then the Prince of Wales, and his future wife, Camilla Parker-Bowles.

The Duke claims, in a written statement, that his grandmother gave him permission in 2017 to pursue the case after his engagement to Meghan Markle. Harry said he understood that his father’s staff at Clarence House blocked his claim as they wanted to keep the media on side “in order to smooth the way for my stepmother (and father) to be accepted by the British public.”

It emerged yesterday that Harry now claims his father and stepmother were hacked from the mid-1990s.

He claims his mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, was hacked for information including details of her therapy sessions and her affair with Oliver Hoare, an art dealer.

Hundreds of pages of documents released by Harry’s lawyers include his strongly worded complaint to Sally Osman, then the Queen’s director of communications, ordering her to pursue the publisher in February 2018 or the royal family would be a “laughing stock”.

Harry demanded a deal before the birth of his brother’s son, Louis, and his own wedding. News Group Newspapers, part of News UK, which also owns The Times, is seeking to “strike out” Harry’s claim by arguing that he missed a six-year deadline on bringing the case.

Harry watched the hearing via video link despite it starting at 2.30am in Los Angeles, where he lives. He attended a hearing in a separate claim against the publisher of the Daily Mail last month and will be at the start of his trial against the publisher of the Daily Mirror after the coronation.

Harry’s attempt to amend his claim to include the alleged secret deal is due to be heard on Thursday morning.

The Times