Royals ‘fed tabloid press stories about Harry’

Prince Harry claims newspaper executives, including Piers Morgan, former Mirror editor, were aware of unlawful information-gathering about his personal life.

Prince Harry with then girlfriend Chelsy Davy in 2007. Picture; AFP.

Members of the royal family gave tabloid newspapers stories about the Duke of Sussex which he claims led to “paranoia”, the High Court was told.

Harry claims he was a victim of unlawful information-gathering along with the King, the Prince of Wales and his mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, by the publisher of the Daily Mirror.

The duke is due to become the first senior royal to give evidence in court since the baccarat scandal of 1890, when a slander action was brought by a card player accused of cheating the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII.

Harry claims newspaper executives, including Piers Morgan, former editor of the Daily Mirror, were aware of the alleged intrusion into his personal life.

Morgan responded by criticising the duke on ITV News, saying that Harry had “spent the last three years ruthlessly and cynically invading the royal family’s privacy”.

Andrew Green KC, acting for Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN), told the court that the publisher “unreservedly apologises” for the use of a private investigator for one story about Harry. He denied other articles in a sample of 33 reports about the duke involved unlawful activity. “Many came from information disclosed by or on behalf of royal households or members of the royal family,” Green said in a written statement. One of the articles came from an “on the-record interview given by [Harry]”.

The publisher admits a private investigator was paid £75 by The People for information about Harry’s conduct at Chinawhite, a celebrity nightclub in Soho, central London, in 2004. While Harry was entitled to compensation for this incident he had “notably” not made a claim about the article, added Green.

Harry claims he was the victim of unlawful information-gathering between 1995 and 2011. The alleged unlawful activities caused him “huge distress”, “presented very real security concerns for not only me but also everyone around me”, and created “a huge amount of paranoia in my relationships”, the court was told.

David Sherborne, the duke’s barrister, claims that Harry and other celebrities were the victims of unlawful activities on an “industrial scale” between 1991 and 2011 at the publisher of the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and The People.

Witnesses will include Omid Scobie, co-author of Finding Freedom, a book about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. He claims while he was on work experience on the Daily Mirror’s 3AM show business column, Morgan asked how confident they were about a story relating to Kylie Minogue, the court was told. He was “told the information had come from voicemails”, Scobie says.

Morgan, 58, the editor of the Daily Mirror between 1995 and 2004, yesterday criticised the duke. “I am not going to take lectures on privacy invasion from Prince Harry, somebody who has spent the last three years ruthlessly and cynically invading the royal family’s privacy for vast commercial gain and told a pack of lies about them,” he told ITV.

Morgan is now a presenter on TalkTV, which is owned by News UK, parent company of The Times.

MGN said: “Where historical wrongdoing has taken place we have made admissions, take full responsibility and apologise unreservedly, but we will vigorously defend against allegations of wrongdoing where our journalists acted lawfully.” The hearing continues.

The Times