Witness in Prince Harry’s case against Daily Mail
owner unreliable, say lawyers
Associated Newspapers lawyers argue key witness’s
‘retraction’ reason to dismiss phone hacking allegations
Jim Waterson Media editor
@jimwaterson
Wed 29 Mar 2023 19.16 BST
Prince
Harry’s case against the owner of the Daily Mail depends on an alleged confession
from an unreliable private investigator who has recanted his evidence,
according to the publisher’s lawyers.
The royal
alleges that Associated Newspapers, the parent company of the Daily Mail and
Mail on Sunday, made widespread use of illegal information-gathering tactics
including phone hacking, landline interception and the blagging of personal
information.
Harry’s
accusations rely partly on evidence from a lengthy witness statement signed in
2021 by a private investigator, Gavin Burrows, and released to journalists on
Wednesday.
In that
statement, Burrows claims that he and his team obtained information, hacked
voicemails, tapped landline phones and bugged cars on behalf of journalists. He
also goes into detail about how he allegedly tapped Elton John’s domestic
landline, bugged cars belonging to Hugh Grant and Carole Middleton, the mother
of the Princess of Wales, and targeted Harry’s girlfriends. Burrows described
how he engaged in illegal activities on behalf of the Mail on Sunday, describing
it as “one of my biggest and most regular clients”.
In the
witness statement, which continues over more than 20 pages, Burrows apparently
admits to a wide variety of crimes and states that he targeted “thousands” of
people on behalf of the Mail on Sunday.
But Adrian
Beltrami KC, representing Associated Newspapers, told the high court on
Wednesday that these claims were now “directly contradicted” by a second
witness statement from Burrows.
In this new
statement, signed three weeks ago and provided to Associated Newspapers, the
private investigator recants his previous confession. He now says he was never
asked to “conduct unlawful information gathering” by the Daily Mail or Mail on
Sunday, and denies being paid in cash for work on behalf of the newspaper.
Beltrami,
who is attempting to have the case thrown out of court before it goes to a
trial, said that raises serious questions about the “credibility and
reliability” of Burrows’ original accusations.
Harry, who
had been in court for the first two days of legal argument, did not appear at
the central London venue on Wednesday. He is bringing his case as part of a
group of seven prominent individuals allegedly targeted by Associated
Newspapers, which also includes Doreen Lawrence, Elton John, David Furnish,
Elizabeth Hurley, Sadie Frost and Simon Hughes.
Their cases
rely on evidence from other private investigators, but Burrows’ original
witness statement makes some of the more lurid claims.
The judge,
Mr Justice Nicklin, observed that Harry and his fellow claimants “may need to
adjust their expectations” regarding the use of Burrows’ evidence.
However, in
a boost for Harry and the other claimants, the judge hinted that he may be
inclined to allow the case to proceed to the next stage, observing that the
quality of evidence is a matter for legal debate. “There is a trial point if
ever I have seen one,” said Nicklin.
Associated
Newspapers denies the allegations and is trying to stop the cases going to a
full trial. The company’s lawyers spent Wednesday arguing at the high court
that Harry and his fellow claimants missed a legal deadline to file the
paperwork so the cases should be stopped from proceeding any further.
The
company’s lawyers said the group of individuals should have suspected they were
the potential victims of illegal behaviour at a much earlier stage, when phone
hacking was first in the news more than a decade ago or they first saw
suspicious articles.
Lawyers
acting for Harry and the other claimants argue that it was not possible to
bring the cases earlier because they had not seen any evidence that suggested
they were potential victims of illegal behaviour.
They also
argued that leading executives at the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday, including
the former editor Paul Dacre, had repeatedly denied any illegality took place
at their newspapers, which they claimed was tantamount to concealing the
alleged wrongdoing.
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