When Prince Harry gives evidence in the Mirror phone-hacking trial on Tuesday, he will become the first senior royal to be cross-examined in court since the 19th century. Based on what happened earlier in the trial, it is unlikely the prince will enjoy the experience.
Harry will allege that journalists at the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and People used illegal methods including phone hacking to obtain stories about him. Mirror Group Newspapers will try to cast doubt on Harry’s evidence, his reliability and why he waited so long to bring the case.
He will be cross-examined on articles with headlines such as “Harry is a Chelsy fan” and “Hooray Harry’s dumped”, requiring him to publicly relive the breakdown of his relationship with his ex-girlfriend Chelsy Davy while under oath in a witness box and watched by the world’s media. He is also expected to be questioned about his relationship with the former Mirror editor Piers Morgan, who Harry’s legal team allege had “clear involvement and knowledge” in illegal activity, which Morgan denies.
Leading the charge against the prince will be the Mirror’s barrister Andrew Green, who will have the unusual legal task of being a king’s counsel employed to discredit a king’s son. Earlier in the trial, he highlighted witnesses’ past drug use, accused individuals of fabricating evidence and suggested Harry and his fellow claimants were “smearing” the Mirror’s board by suggesting they organised a high-level cover-up of phone hacking.
Whether Green is willing to use such tactics against the prince – and how the prince copes with it if so – will become apparent. But this is the risk Harry has taken by bringing the case. In return, he gains the right to make direct allegations against the journalists he blames for destroying his mental health and for the death of his mother, Diana, Princess of Wales.
For years, the royal family’s approach to the media and courts was based on the “never complain, never explain” mantra. Relations with the press were to be managed carefully, deals were done out of sight, and – most importantly – royal family members were to be kept out of court. The nearest the royals came to a courtroom in recent decades was in 2002 when Princess Anne pleaded guilty to an offence under the dangerous dogs act.
Harry has completely upended this rule. He makes no secret of his loathing of the tabloids and as a result, the parent company of almost every British national newspaper – with the exception of the Guardian, Daily Telegraph and the Financial Times – is being sued by the prince.
Harry has made clear in previous court filings how he views this as a crusade against the media that he is carrying out for others. He has expressed disgust at how the rest of his family has chosen good relations with the tabloids over trying to change the British press. The prince alleges King Charles prioritised positive coverage of Queen Camilla over changing the system, and he alleged Prince William received a secret phone-hacking payout from Rupert Murdoch’s News UK in 2020, speculated to be worth about £1m.
Although the media has tended to report the Mirror phone-hacking trial through the lens of Prince Harry, he is just the most high profile of more than 100 claimants – including the singer Cheryl and the estate of George Michael – who are involved in the wider litigation.
The initial weeks of the trial have focused on the broader issue of illegal behaviour by the Mirror’s publisher, complete with allegations of board-level cover-ups, suggestions that Morgan must have known about phone hacking by his journalists, and claims that illegal use of private investigators to blag personal details was rife at the newspaper group.
The second half of the trial, which will run until the end of June, involves scrutinising four specific claims by individuals – Harry, the Coronation Street actors Michael Turner and Nikki Sanderson, and the ex-wife of the comedian Paul Whitehouse, Fiona Wightman. Harry will fly in from California to watch the outline of his case being argued on Monday, before he is cross-examined on Tuesday and Wednesday.
The Mirror has accepted that in one instance its journalists illegally used a private investigator to gather information on his visit to a nightclub. But it says most of the other articles were based on old-fashioned sourcing – whether via payments to staff in clubs for gossip or briefings direct from King Charles’s aides – and there is no evidence its journalists hacked Harry’s voicemails. Less eye-catching but just as important to the judge is the allegation that the claims have been filed too late. Individuals have six years from learning they were the victim of a crime to start a case in the civil court system and the Mirror argues Harry waited too long.
In the coming weeks, Harry will find out whether his other two, entirely separate, phone-hacking cases – against the publisher of the Daily Mail and the publisher of the Sun – will be allowed to proceed to trial. If the judges do give the go-ahead then Harry might be making two further trips to the witness box during the next 12 months.
