PRINCE HARRY’S FRIENDS 'A GOOD SOURCE OF LEAKS'
Prince Harry’s friends were a “good source of leaks” who told journalists what he got up to in his private life, lawyers for the Daily Mail’s publisher have said.
The Duke of Sussex attended the High Court in person on Monday for the start of a nine-week privacy trial against Associated Newspapers, which is expected to cost a combined total of more than £38m.
The Prince, who is one of seven claimants, is pursuing a privacy claim against the company over 14 articles published between 2001 and 2013. He is expected to give evidence later this week.
His lawyers claim some of the information in the articles was obtained through unlawful means, such as voicemail interception and paying “inquiry agents” to “blag” private information.
The publisher “strongly denies” the allegations. Its lawyers argued in court documents that the articles were “sourced entirely legitimately from information variously provided by contacts of the journalists responsible (including individuals in the Duke of Sussex’s’ social circle), press officers and publicists, freelance journalists, photographers and prior reports”.
Describing how friends of the Prince gave journalists stories, the documents stated: “At all material times, the Duke of Sussex’s social circle was and was known to be a good source of leaks or disclosure of information to the media about what he got up to in his private life.”
The publisher said former Mail on Sunday diary column editors would give evidence saying that they “personally mixed in the Duke of Sussex’s social circle at parties, social events and nightclubs, and obtained stories about him and his then girlfriend Chelsy Davy from their respective friends and associates and from their and their friends’ social media posts”.
Associated also stressed that the Duke “discussed his private life in the media, including his personal relationships” and cited emails disclosed by his legal team, which they said showed he was aware stories were coming from “friends or mates [of friends] gossiping”.
Lawyers for the publisher also argued that Katie Nicholl, the former Mail on Sunday diary editor, socialised with the Duke’s friends and even the Duke himself.
They stated that Ms Nicholl “was often at parties that the Duke of Sussex and his circle of friends attended and had excellent contacts at the nightclubs Boujis and Amika, who would tip her off when the Duke of Sussex and his friends were coming to the club.
“She states from April 2003, when Ms Nicholl met the Duke of Sussex at Kensington Roof Gardens and was invited by the Duke of Sussex to join him and his friends at a private party, Ms Nicholl socialised with the Duke of Sussex and his friends.”
She also knew several people who were Facebook friends of the Duke who would show her screenshots of his posts and messages that could only be viewed by approved friends.
One of the articles the Prince claims was unlawfully obtained had, in fact, come from a Palace press officer, Associated said.
A 2006 article headlined “Let her rest in peace” about the late Diana, Princess of Wales, could only have been sourced by unlawful information gathering, according to the Prince’s legal team.
But Associated’s lawyers said that the reporter who wrote the story, royal editor Rebecca English, “spoke to a Palace press officer who provided the information in this article” and was told that neither Prince William nor Prince Harry would object to the article being published.
The other claimants are Sir Elton John and his husband David Furnish, the actresses Sadie Frost Law and Elizabeth Hurley, former MP Sir Simon Hughes and Baroness Doreen Lawrence, mother of the murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence.
Associated argued that all of the claims should be dismissed because of a six-year statute of limitations on privacy claims. The publisher said all of the claimants knew or should have known about articles they are now relying on in evidence long before the cut-off date for claims to be brought.
Associated argued that in the cases of Sir Simon and Ms Frost Law, researchers working for their legal team had found what they believed to be evidence of phone hacking and phone tapping by 2016.
The publisher claimed that the claimants’ legal team arranged for articles to be published – with Sir Simon’s knowledge – on an obscure website called Byline Investigates so that he could later say that was how and when he first found out he might have been an alleged victim.
On July 11 2019, Evan Harris, the former Liberal Democrat MP who is now the joint executive director of the privacy campaign group Hacked Off, emailed Sir Simon to say: “The Mail hacking claims are being developed and will be ready to launch soon. To deter the Mail from arguing ‘limitation’ (ie you knew about this 6 years ago) Atkins Thomson [solicitors] think it best for stories to be written on Byline, which can be referred as the basis for claims being raised.”
The article was not published for another year, which Associated said was “a calculated attempt to withhold the true position from the court”.
Associated argued that an “identical approach” was taken to “camouflage the litigation position in Ms Frost Law’s claim”.
David Sherborne, for the claimants, told the High Court that Associated “knew they had skeletons in their closet” and had a practice of “clear, systematic and sustained use of unlawful information gathering”.
In written submissions to the court, Prince Harry said: “I find it deeply troubling that Associated used phrases such as ‘sources’, ‘friends’ and the like as a device to hide unlawful information gathering.”
Mr Sherbourne alleged unlawful information-gathering by Associated in relation to Baroness Lawrence was “hard to fathom, given what she has gone through already over the years”.
“It has been a new trauma and injustice for me”, Baroness Lawrence said in a statement read out by the barrister.
Associated denies all of the allegations. The hearing will resume on Tuesday.
2026-01-19T10:10:50Z