Prince Harry admits Spare contradicts his evidence at hacking trial

2023-06-06

Prince Harry admits his Spare memoir contradicts his evidence at hacking trial as he denies solicitors drafted witness statement for him – and tries to turn questions on lawyer as court hears story ‘came from a palace press release’

Prince Harry admitted his memoir Spare contradicted a claim in his witness statement at the High Court today – and denied accusations his solicitors drafted evidence for him.

The Duke of Sussex, who has become the first royal to testify for more than a century at the phone hacking trial in London, also tried to turn questions on a lawyer after the High Court was told a story subject to one of his complaints came from a royal press release.

Andrew Green KC, for Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN), told the royal: ‘I am here to cross-examine you, I am afraid that’s the way this works, Prince Harry.’

Harry has alleged that around 140 articles published between 1996 and 2010 by Mirror Group Newspapers contained inforhigmation gathered using unlawful methods.

But Mr Green told the court that details in these stories actually came from other media outlets, including the BBC, as well as press releases, palace statements, the public domain, his aides and friends and even comments made by his mother Princess Diana.

Prince Harry pictured leaving the High Court in London after giving evidence in the phone hacking trial today

The Duke of Sussex (pictured left in a court sketch) became the first royal to testify for more than a century

It came as Harry was today asked about an article published in December 2003 about a possible meeting between him and his brother the Prince of Wales, and their mother’s former butler Paul Burrell.

Prince Harry will stay in Britain twice as long as he did for the Coronation

The Duke of Sussex will be in the High Court witness box for two days this week – twice as long as he spent when he came for the Coronation.

He made a flying visit for the momentous day his father King Charles was crowned, spending around 28 hours in Britain before dashing back to California.

But the duke seems to have more time to devote to his legal crusade against the Mirror newspapers’ publisher.

He is expected to spend a full day in the witness box at the High Court today and at least half a day tomorrow. In fact, he could have begun giving his evidence yesterday, but he did not fly to the UK until Sunday evening so that he could help celebrate his two-year-old daughter’s birthday. Earlier this year, Harry spent another three days in the High Court watching a preliminary hearing in a separate court battle he is waging against the publisher of the Mail.

At the Coronation on May 6, Harry flew in the day before. He sat in the third row at Westminster Abbey, two rows behind his brother William, before hurrying back to Heathrow as soon as the service was over.

By the time King Charles and Queen Camilla were waving from the Buckingham Palace balcony, he was already at the airport, on his way back to his Montecito mansion for his son Archie’s fourth birthday.

The Duke of Sussex told the court that royal spokespeople ‘rarely ever commented on private matters’, with public statements ‘only preserved for major events’.

Harry made the comments amid questioning over a March 2002 article in the Daily Mirror about him contracting glandular fever entitled ‘Harry’s sick with kissing disease’.

Mr Green said the article, which reported the diagnosis came before the duke’s annual ski trip with his father and brother, contains quotes from a palace spokeswoman about the duke taking doctors’ advice.

The MGN barrister said the story was covered in other newspapers, adding there was no evidence that information from the palace ‘was not put out freely’.

In his written witness statement, the duke said: ‘I do not believe that the palace put this information out freely.’

In court, Mr Green said Harry was inviting the court to assume the article came from ‘nefarious activity’ by a journalist.

Harry said he was ‘very suspicious’ about information in the article, adding it was ‘highly personal’ and ‘distressing’.

The duke was also asked by Mr Green about journalists covering royal trips, with Harry saying they were ‘unable to go on holidays by ourselves without having to do a photocall’, which was done ‘in hope that they would leave us alone’.

Mr Green’s questioning of the duke turned to a Sunday Mirror article published in January 2002 entitled ‘Harry took drugs’.

The barrister said it was the News Of The World newspaper that ‘broke the story’ about the duke smoking cannabis. ‘The untrue story, yes,’ Harry said.

Mr Green said the News Of The World had contacted the duke’s father’s office about the story, and ‘the palace’ had ‘cooperated’ with the coverage via ‘spin doctor’ Mark Bolland.

When asked whether this was the source of information in the Sunday Mirror, Harry said: ‘I wasn’t the one that wrote the article so you will have to asked the journalists.’

Extracts from Harry’s memoir Spare were read out in court by the MGN barrister, in which the duke complained of there being a ‘putrid strategy’ to ‘spin me right under the bus’ over the News Of The World piece.

In court, the duke said the News Of The World story was a ‘red rag to a bull’ for newspapers, with editors asking ‘why didn’t you get this’ and saying ‘make this into an exclusive for ourselves’.

Harry and Meghan attend the Ms Foundation Women of Vision Awards in New York on May 16

Harry was not in court yesterday – missing it because he stayed in California for daughter Lilibet’s second birthday, which led to a telling off from the judge

Harry said the incident was ‘less about what’s in the story itself’ but ‘the activity behind the scenes’, referring to the alleged use of private investigators to secure information. The Sunday Mirror was on the back foot and therefore did everything they could,’ the duke said.

Mr Green asked Harry if he accepted it was a matter of public interest someone in line to the throne was allegedly taking drugs. Harry replied that there was a difference ‘between public interest and what interests the public’, adding of the story: ‘Every element of it was distressing’.

The Duke of Sussex faced questions about an April 2003 Mirror article about Harry leading cadets at an Eton parade.

Mr Green put it to Harry that the information complained about in this three-line story came from a St James Palace press release.

The MGN barrister said the Press Association had reported about Harry leading the tattoo on the same day as the press release and had quoted an Eton spokesman.

Mr Green asked if there was anything objectionable in the Press Association coverage.

The duke said he was not aware of the Press Association report, adding: ‘I don’t believe that they have admitted hacking in any shape or form.’

The court heard from Harry that he also complained about a Mirror article published on the same day about the same story.

He was met at the door of the court by his KC David Sherborne

Harry is one of a number of high-profile figures to have brought claims against Mirror Group Newspapers over alleged unlawful information gathering at its titles

He said he had brought a claim for damages over the articles ‘based on the legal advice that I have been given’.

In his written witness statement, he said of the journalist who wrote the second cadet parade story ‘that at least one of his bylined articles has previously been admitted by MGN to have been the product of unlawful information-gathering’.

Under continuing cross-examination, the Duke of Sussex rejected a suggestion that a royal aide was behind information given to the press about his gap year experience in Australia.

Harry was questioned by Mr Green about an article entitled ‘Harry is ready to quit Oz’ published in the Mirror in September 2003.

Mr Green said it appeared that information about Harry ‘watching TV and videos’ – which the duke said in his written statement was a bid to avoid camera crews – came from aide Mark Dyer.

‘It doesn’t appear that way,’ the duke said, later adding: ‘I don’t accept that Mr Dyer was freely speaking to the press.’

READ MORE: ‘Paul Burrell is a ‘two-face s***’: Court hears how Prince Harry described Diana’s ex-butler

Mr Green said to Harry that ‘the information that you are alleging came from voicemail interception or unlawful information-gathering … in fact came from your minders’.

Harry said he saw similarities in reports by other newspapers, adding that the coverage showed: ‘The level of interest and fascination with my life even when I’m in the middle of the Australian outback.’

Mr Green asked the duke about an article published in December 2003 about a possible meeting between him and his brother the Prince of Wales, and their mother’s former butler Paul Burrell.

Harry admitted there was a disagreement between himself and William about Mr Burrell, and said this was the sort of article that caused ‘distrust’, adding it was ‘entirely private’ information.

Mr Green said in the article Harry was said to be firmly against meeting Mr Burrell and described him as a ‘two-faced s***’.

Harry said: ‘Those are words that I used and I certainly left voicemails on my brother’s phone.’

Mr Green asked: ‘Using that phrase?’, to which Harry replied: ‘Yes.’

The barrister then asked about a discrepancy between the duke’s witness statement, in which he says he ‘didn’t want to hear’ Mr Burrell’s reasons for selling some of Diana’s possessions and giving interviews about her, and his memoir Spare, in which he says he wanted to fly home from his gap year job in the Australian outback to meet the former butler.

Harry said: ‘The time gap between the original article and when I wrote this book was rather a large gap between the two.’

Mr Green said: ‘Your position is that at the time you didn’t want a meeting, or you did want a meeting, what is the true position?’

Harry replied: ‘I honestly can’t remember whether I wanted a meeting or not.’

Mr Green asked: ‘Is it your position that you do actually remember leaving a voicemail on William’s phone saying that?’

The duke responded: ‘I was leaving voicemails for my brother and that is the terminology I used for Burrell.’

However, he said he did not specifically recall leaving William a voice message saying that.

The Prince, Coronation Street actors Michael Turner and Nikki Sanderson and Paul Whitehouse’s ex-wife Fiona Wightman, make allegations that the publisher’s journalists were linked to voicemail interception

David Sherborne, Harry’s barrister, at London’s High Court today

The Duke of Sussex jetted into the UK from California on Monday and looked relaxed and even smiled as he entered the High Court’s modern annexe – the Rolls Building – saying ‘good morning’ to the waiting press.

Yesterday he was criticised by one of Britain’s top judges and accused of wasting court time after missing the first day of his historic case – to celebrate his daughter Lilibet’s birthday in Montecito before flying to Britain.

Harry and three others are suing the Mirror group claiming the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and The People newspaper hacked their phones or conducted other illegal activity, which is denied.

The last royal in the witness box was Edward VII in 1891 who gave evidence when a slander action was brought by a card player accused of cheating at baccarat at a time when gambling was illegal. His appearance in the witness box left Queen Victoria unamused – but it is not known what Harry’s father, King Charles III, thinks about his son’s historic court appearance.

Under cross examination from Andrew Green KC, for MGN, the Duke of Sussex 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.

A box of paperwork marked ‘Duke of Sussex’ is brought into the High Court in London

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’.

During cross-examination, the Duke of Sussex was challenged by Mr Green over whether a part of his witness statement was drafted for him by his solicitors.

‘This whole witness statement was written by me after a series of video calls with my legal team,’ the duke said, explaining they took place while he was in California.

Harry added that he would spend two-and-a-half or three hours each time speaking to his lawyers.

‘I’m saying that this witness statement is mine,’ he added.

His written statement reveals:

ROCK BOTTOM

Harry proclaimed: ‘On a national level, at the moment, our country is judged globally by the state of our press and our government – both of which I believe are at rock bottom’.

He did not specify exactly why he thought the Government was at rock bottom. But he claimed it was ‘scared of alienating’ the Press and this was ‘incredibly worrying for the entire UK’, and he added: ‘Democracy fails when your press fails to scrutinise and hold the government accountable, and instead choose to get into bed with them so they can ensure the status quo.’

The duke said: ‘I may not have a role within the Institution but, as a member of the British Royal family, and as a soldier upholding important values, I feel there’s a responsibility to expose this criminal activity in the name of public interest.’

Harry said that he hoped ‘to save journalism as a profession’ and was bringing his claim ‘not because I hate the tabloid press or even necessarily a section of it, but in order to properly hold the people who have hijacked privileges which come with being a member of the press, to account for their actions’.

Harry says the British Government and press has hit ‘rock bottom’

JAMES HEWITT

Harry said he was a teenager when he heard cruel and hurtful stories James Hewitt was his real father – before discovering aged 30 that the timeline did not fit.

He was 18 when he first heard ‘a rumour that my biological father was James Hewitt, a man my mother had a relationship with after I was born’.

He added: ‘At the time of this article and others similar to it, I wasn’t actually aware that my mother hadn’t met Major Hewitt until after I was born. This timeline is something I only learnt of in around 2014,’ when he was around 30.

The duke added: ‘At the time, when I was 18 years old and had lost my mother just six years earlier, stories such as this felt very damaging and very real to me. They were hurtful, mean and cruel. I was always left questioning the motives behind the stories.’

The prince said: ‘Were the newspapers keen to put doubt into the minds of the public so I might be ousted from the Royal Family?’

Harry on rumours that James Hewitt was his father

NAZI DRESS

Harry on his ‘Nazi’ uniform scandal

Harry recounts the infamous time in 2005 he dressed as a Nazi – while not using the word Nazi.

He says there was ‘a lot of press coverage of me at the time, as I had attended a fancy dress party’.

Harry, who was 20 at the time, triggered a storm of outrage when a picture was published in The Sun of his him wearing the outfit complete with a swastika on his arm to a ‘native and colonial’ party. He said it was a ‘poor choice of costume’ and he was ‘very sorry if I caused any offence or embarrassment to anyone’. In his memoir Spare, he claimed that Prince William and Kate encouraged him to wear the distasteful Nazi soldier costume.

In the statement to the court, he said: ‘It was a challenging period for me. I had been immature, I hadn’t really thought about my actions and I had made a stupid decision.’ But he complained about the Press: ‘My mistakes were being played out publicly.’

Harry alleges the Mirror, which had followed up the Sun’s story, must have used hacking because it reported his girlfriend Chelsy Davy ‘was furious and had given me a ‘tongue-lashing down the phone’ following allegations that I had been flirting with a brunette at the party’. The duke said: ‘How could the Defendant’s journalists know about this?’

PAUL BURRELL

Harry on Paul Burrell

Harry admitted he would have referred to Paul Burrell as a ‘two-face s***’, as was reported in a newspaper article which he said ‘accurately sets out the position’.

His mother’s former butler had recently been on trial for allegedly selling Diana’s possessions, and after the case collapsed Prince William had wanted to meet with Burrell, according to the 2003 article in the People, as ‘the only way to stop him selling more Diana secrets’. But Harry feared the former servant would simply use it as an opportunity to make money.

Harry said: ‘The article accurately sets out the position that my brother was open to fixing a meeting with Paul to discuss his ongoing exposés about our mother. However I had made up my mind about the kind of person I thought Paul was, and was firmly against meeting him.

‘Both my brother and I had very strong feelings about how indiscrete Paul had proven to be with the way he had sold our mother’s possessions and how he had given numerous interviews about her.’

Harry claimed the People article – which claimed Harry had condemned Burrell – must have been sourced from interception of voicemails, admitting: ‘I would have used the phrase ‘two-face s***’, as is reported, and believe this could have been lifted directly from a voicemail I had left.’

Barrister Mr Sherborne told the court on Monday: ‘Even at this very early formative stage the seeds of discord between these two brothers are starting to be sown. Brothers can sometimes disagree but once it is made public in this way and their inside feelings revealed in the way that they are, trust begins to be eroded and paranoia sets in.’

ETON

Harry on fears that he would be expelled from Eton

The prince was ‘extremely worried I was going to be expelled’ from Eton after a Daily Mirror article was published with the headline: ‘Harry’s cocaine ecstasy and GHB parties’ in 2002. He said: ‘Eton had a zero drugs policy in place’. The headline was misleading, he claimed, because he ‘only smoked cannabis’, he was quoted as telling his father, and it made it sound like he was hosting the parties.

The duke said it was ‘not clear to me’ where the journalists had got their quotes from, so it made him ‘wonder with hindsight’ if they had heard something they were not intended to, and as there was ‘no explanation of how they learnt the information’ he was ‘at a loss as to who would have said’ it.

DIANA’S ‘PARANOIA’

Harry suffered the same gnawing fears as Princess Diana. He said: ‘I’ve always heard people refer to my mother as paranoid, but she wasn’t. She was fearful of what was actually happening to her and now I know that I was the same.’

He claimed articles about him as a teenager made him feel constantly suspicious of those close to him, including former nanny Tiggy Legge-Bourke and his friend Mark Dyer. The duke said: ‘I doubted the loyalty of Tiggy and even Marko, who I really looked up to. My brother and I even stopped talking to Marko for a long period of time. I can see how much of my life was wasted on this paranoia.’

PIERS MORGAN

Harry on Piers Morgan

The former editor Piers Morgan has unleashed ‘a barrage of horrific personal attacks and intimidation’ against Harry and his wife, the duke claimed. Harry added this was ‘as a consequence of me bringing my Mirror Group claim’ and was ‘presumably in retaliation and in the hope that I will back down, before being able to hold him properly accountable for his unlawful activity towards both me and my mother during his editorship’. Mr Morgan was editor of the Daily Mirror from 1995 to 2004 and has always denied phone hacking, saying he will not take lectures on privacy invasion from ‘somebody who has spent the last three years ruthlessly and cynically invading the Royal Family’s privacy for vast commercial gain’.

LAP DANCING CLUB

When Harry visited a Spearmint Rhino club with fellow Sandhurst cadets, an article in The People claimed Chelsy Davy ‘blew her top’ and had ‘let rip in a string of phone calls’. The duke said the story must have come from phone hacking, adding: ‘I don’t think Chelsy did go mad about me going there. We did speak about it over the phone, but I promised her that I hadn’t had a lap dance and stayed with the three other cadets that had girlfriends.’

The Duke of Sussex will be in the High Court witness box for two days this week – twice as long as he spent when he came for the Coronation. It is not clear if he will see his father or brother this week – or meet his cousin Princess Eugenie’s new son Ernest, who was born last Tuesday.

He made a flying visit for the momentous day his father King Charles was crowned, spending around 28 hours in Britain before dashing back to California.

Prince Harry will stay in Britain twice as long as he did for the Coronation

It comes just over a month after Harry attended the Coronation of his father the King on May 6

The Duke of Sussex will be in the High Court witness box for two days this week – twice as long as he spent when he came for the Coronation.

He made a flying visit for the momentous day his father King Charles was crowned, spending around 28 hours in Britain before dashing back to California.

But the duke seems to have more time to devote to his legal crusade against the Mirror newspapers’ publisher.

He is expected to spend a full day in the witness box at the High Court today and at least half a day tomorrow.

Cross-examining Prince Harry, Andrew Green KC, for MGN, questioned the duke about a Daily Mirror article publisher in September 1996 entitled ‘Diana so sad on Harry’s big day’.

The court heard that Harry has complained about the article containing details of his feelings regarding the divorce of his parents and the ill health of a family friend.

The MGN barrister said the duke was first issued with a mobile phone when he went to Eton in 1998, putting it to Harry that the 1996 article could not have involved phone hacking.

Harry replied: ‘That’s incorrect. My security at school had a separate room with a land line.’

He said ‘most Sunday nights’, after being dropped off by his mother ‘the first thing we would do is to use the phone to ring her… in floods of tears’.

Harry also said it could have been his mother who was hacked, but Mr Green replied ‘that’s just speculation you’ve come up with now’.

Mr Green said the article reported that Harry at the time was ‘believed to be taking the royal divorce badly’, with the duke replying: ‘Like most children I think, yes’.

The barrister said such information was not saying anything that was not ‘pretty obvious’.

The duke said there was ‘no legitimacy’ in putting such information in the newspaper, adding that ‘the methods in which it was obtained seem incredibly suspicious’.

The Duke of Sussex faced questions from Mr Green about claims in his witness statement that MGN’s alleged intrusion into his life contributed to ‘a huge amount of paranoia’.

Mr Green asked Harry how he had such feelings if he was not aware of articles published in relation to him at the time.

The Duke said he would be ‘speculating’ if he said which articles he had read and which he had not.

Harry added: ‘In my experience, the vast majority of the quotes were attributed to a pal, a friend, a source, an onlooker, which actually creates more suspicion’.

The duke said he started to re-examine articles when he ‘realised information had been unlawfully obtained’.

Andrew Green KC, for MGN, asked Harry about part of his case that alleges articles ’caused him to be paranoid and to distrust those around him’, and whether he was referring to specific MGN articles or ‘the general effect of all of the articles’ about him.

Harry said: ‘Yes, because … it is 20 years ago and I simply can’t other than speculate whether I saw these articles at the time.

‘I certainly saw a lot of articles at the time and was made aware … unfortunately, by the behaviour and reaction of my inner circle.’

The duke added that when information he had only told to a few members of his inner circle was made public, ‘your circle of friends starts to shrink’.

Andrew Green KC, for MGN, then asked the duke: ‘Is it realistic, when you have been the subject of so much press intrusion by so many press, both domestic and international, to attribute specific distress to a particular article from 20 years ago, which you may not have seen at the time?’

Harry replied: ‘As I said earlier, it isn’t a specific article, it is all of the articles.’

He added: ‘Every single article has caused me distress,’ to which Mr Green then asked if each individual article had caused him distress.

Harry replied: ‘Yes, without question.’

Mr Green then asked Harry about part of his case which states that he was caused particular distress ‘because he is a very private person’ and was in the public eye at a young age.

Harry said: ‘I believe that as a child, every single one of these articles played an important role in my growing up.’

However, he added that he could not confirm whether he remembered reading specific articles at the time they were published, adding that there were ‘millions’ of articles ‘that have been written about me since age 12’.

In fact, he could have begun giving his evidence yesterday, but he did not fly to the UK until Sunday evening so that he could help celebrate his two-year-old daughter’s birthday.

An exasperated judge rebuked the duke’s barrister when it became clear the royal witness was ‘unavailable’ for the opening day of his own case suing the publisher of the Mirror newspaper.

David Sherborne explained that his client was in a ‘different category’ because of his ‘travel and security arrangements’. Those arrangements involved Harry flying from California on Sunday night after celebrating Princess Lilibet of Sussex’s second birthday, the court heard.

The Mirror’s KC Andrew Green said it was ‘absolutely extraordinary’ that Harry was ‘not available for day one of his trial’. Mr Justice Fancourt said he was ‘a little surprised’ that Harry was not there, and admonished Mr Sherborne for causing ‘timetable chaos’.

Source: Read Full Article

Prince Harry admits Spare contradicts his evidence at hacking trial

Prince Harry admits his Spare memoir contradicts his evidence at hacking trial as he denies solicitors drafted witness statement for him – and tries to turn questions on lawyer as court hears story ‘came from a palace press release’

READ MORE: Prince Harry brands UK government ‘rock bottom’ and calls Diana’s butler a ‘two-faced s***’

READ MORE: Prince Harry statement in full

READ MORE: Prince Harry tells hacking case how he feared rumours about Major James Hewitt ‘being my biological father’ could have ‘ousted’ him from the Royal Family

Prince Harry will stay in Britain twice as long as he did for the Coronation

READ MORE: ‘Paul Burrell is a ‘two-face s***’: Court hears how Prince Harry described Diana’s ex-butler

Prince Harry will stay in Britain twice as long as he did for the Coronation