The 10 revelations from Prince Harry's witness statement
The Duke’s feud with the Prince of Wales and a claimed agreement with Murdoch newspapers are laid bare in a High Court filing
A “secret agreement” was struck between the Royal household and Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper group over phone hacking in order to “smooth the way” for Camilla to become Queen Consort, Prince Harry has claimed.
The Duke of Sussex has said that “anything that might upset the applecart”, including high-profile legal action against the Murdoch press, was blocked by staff at Clarence House.
It is
just one of a series of incendiary claims made by Prince Harry in a 31-page witness statement submitted by him to the High Court in his legal action against News Group Newspapers, publishers of The Sun and the now defunct News of the World.
They include the claim, which has not been denied by Kensington Palace, that Prince William secretly received
a large payout from the company in 2020 to compensate him for his phone being hacked.
With less than a fortnight to go until the Coronation - which Prince Harry is due to attend - he has once again claimed that his own interests were sacrificed to protect the public image of his stepmother, who will be crowned alongside the King at Westminster Abbey.
He says in the statement that attempts to force NGN to settle the dispute with the Royal household dragged on for years, and that Clarence House staff were “unhelpful” in progressing it and “were seemingly blocking our every move”.
He claims it was part of “a specific long-term strategy to keep the media (including NGN) onside in order to smooth the way for my stepmother (and father) to be accepted by the British public as Queen Consort (and King respectively) when the time came, and anything that might upset the applecart in this regard (including the suggestion of resolution of our phone hacking claims) was to be avoided at all costs”.
“This was all because of the secret agreement which had been reached between NGN and the institution that there would be no actions until the end of the litigation.”
When the Duke did eventually
issue his hacking claims in October 2019, he was “summoned to Buckingham Palace and specifically told to drop the legal actions because they have an ‘effect on all the family’.”
This, he claimed, was a demand that had come directly from his father; Sir Edward Young, the Queen’s private secretary, and his father’s private secretary, Sir Clive Alderton.
In interviews to promote his book, Spare, the Duke branded his stepmother “the villain” and suggested she was “dangerous”. He alleged that bodies had been “left in the street” as she sought to rehabilitate her image.
The Duke’s lengthy witness statement is an excoriating romp through his many preoccupations, from his bitter hatred of the tabloid media to his distrust of palace courtiers.
Late Queen permitted Harry to ‘push things forward’
In the statement, Prince Harry claimed that
Queen Elizabeth II gave him permission to sue over phone hacking in order to keep the tabloids away from his wedding.
Prince Harry explained it was the approach of
Harry and Meghan’s wedding in May 2018 that spurred the Duke to seek a resolution against the publisher as he could not abide the thought of the “main culprits” from the tabloid newspapers being amongst the congregation.
He said: “How could they be permitted to have a ringside seat and then sell millions of newspapers and clicks on the back of it when all they have sought to do is destroy our relationship, destroy my wife with their endless lies while giving a platform to her abusers when most of these ‘journalists’ knew the truth anyway because of the illegal methods they had used to dig into her past?”
Prince Harry told his brother they needed to get permission to push for a resolution to the phone hacking claims and a formal apology from Rupert Murdoch “before any of his people are allowed anywhere near the wedding, or words to that effect”.
It was the “perfect opportunity”, he believed, to force their hand.
Prince William was “very understanding and supportive” and suggested his brother speak to the late Queen, who gave her permission to “push things forward”.
Sally Osman,
then director of royal communications, was told to press on but received little support from Sir Edward, the Duke claimed.
In an imploring email sent to several aides in December 2017, the Duke said: “They are playing us and Sally needs to feel fully supported so she can have the confidence to push on without feeling isolated.”
A second email sent in February 2018 asked for the latest, adding: “They are running out of time.”
In March, he pushed again, noting the fast-approaching wedding date as well as his grandmother’s support. “Putting her in the position of having to invite these people into Windsor Castle without resolution is not an option.”
Eventually, the Duke was informed shortly before his wedding that NGN was not in a position to apologise “because it would seriously undermine their settlement strategy across all the other claims”.
Prince Harry was “afforded one small concession” in that the Royal rota comprising the royal correspondents that he so despised, was not allowed in St George’s Chapel on the day of the wedding.
“It was a small victory but one I celebrated hugely,” he said.
Duke discusses hatred of tabloids
The Prince also took further aim at the
tabloid press.
“It is no secret that I have had, and continue to have, a very difficult relationship with the tabloid press in the UK,” the Duke said in witness documents, with some understatement.
From his “unique perspective”, the Duke used the court document to proffer his own advice about how journalism as a profession can be “saved”: by exposing those working in the media who have “hijacked the privileges and powers of the press”.
He said the “most disturbing and dangerous” part of all was that journalists were “all ganging up to protect each other”.
“It is clear to me that the tabloid press is the mothership of online trolling,” he went on.
“This is brainwashing at the highest level. People die as a result of trolling, and people will continue to take their own lives when they can’t see any other way out. How much more blood will stain their typing fingers before someone can put a stop to this madness?”
The Duke said that both the country and the British public
deserved to know “the depths” of what was happening both then and now.
As someone who had had a front-row seat for three decades, he suggested that it was now down to him to “make sure this unlawful behaviour is exposed.”
“We will be better off for it,” he said. “One could say there is no greater public interest argument than exposing the unlawful practices of those that act in the name of public interest, (unless, of course, they are above the law as they plainly believe).”
Prince Harry acknowledged that he no longer had an official role within the institution but said he was acting as a member of the 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, rather than ignore it or work with it for self-preservation,” he said.
He accused the newspapers of pigeonholing each individual member of the Royal family and then coaxing him to behave accordingly.
In his case, he was the “thicko”, the “cheat”, the “underage drinker”,
the “irresponsible drug taker”, he said
The “distorted” view of his life portrayed by the tabloids meant that members of the public he met on a day-to-day basis through the course of his work could “easily” have decided they hated him so much they would stab him, he said.
He said it was “truly appalling” that the newspapers had used his mental health challenges to their own advantage.
“Despite them all knowing about what I was dealing with throughout the years, they kept on doubling down their efforts rather than letting up,” he said.
“That is grotesque and sadistic – and no doubt they were hoping for a total and very public breakdown.”
When he went to meet
his ex-girlfriend Chelsy Davy at the airport and encountered paparazzi there, he had no idea whether they were reaching for cameras from their bags “or drawing some kind of weapon”, he said.
Any individual of interest to the press is a “target”, a “victim of their business model” and there is nowhere to hide, he added.
“In my view, in order to save journalism as a profession, journalists need to expose those unethical people in the media that have stolen or hijacked the privileges and powers of the press, and have used illegal or unlawful means for their own commercial gain and to further their policy agendas.”
Geidt v Young
The Duke also used his statement to make a dig at Sir Edward Young,
the late Queen’s private secretary with whom he did not see eye to eye.
Had his predecessor, Sir Christopher Geidt, been “allowed to stay in post” beyond October 2017, everything would have turned out very differently, he mused.
Sir Christopher is
said to have been “forced out” in a power struggle between the King - then Prince of Wales - and Buckingham Palace.
It was Sir Christopher who urged the Duke at the end of 2016 to ask NGN how it would deal with the Royal family’s hacking claims as he suspected other litigation would soon come to an end.
Sir Christopher or someone else from the Royal household had a conversation with Rebekah Brooks and the Duke and William were told that the “wheels were in motion.”
However, Sir Christopher then left his post and nothing was ever resolved.
In his memoir, the Duke laid bare his disdain for the senior palace aides he believed called all the shots and plotted against him, among them, Sir Edward, who he dubbed “The Bee”.
“The Bee was oval-faced and fuzzy and tended to glide around with great equanimity and poise as if he was a boon to all,” he wrote.
The claim is one of a number of legal actions currently being brought by the Duke, who
appeared in person at the High Court last month for a preliminary hearing against Associated Newspapers Limited, the publisher of The Mail and The Mail on Sunday.
He is also expected to give evidence at a trial over allegations of unlawful information against the tabloid publisher Mirror Group Newspapers, due to begin next month, with Prince Harry due to appear in court in June.
Out of the loop over Bradby voicemail hack
Suspicions that the News of the World was hacking royal mobile phones were first raised in 2005 when an article about
newsreader Tom Bradby helping Prince William with his gap year video appeared in the newspaper. But Prince Harry was not included in the conversations with his brother, Bradby or their private secretary Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton.
“I don’t know why I was kept out of the loop,” he says. “Perhaps they thought that I, being the younger brother, didn’t need to know this sort of thing or wasn’t equipped to deal with something so serious.”
He said that his brother and Bradby “had a close relationship at that point and I know they talked a lot, but about what, I don’t know”.
Diana and police protection
The Prince claims that his mother Diana, Princess of Wales thought her protection officers were
leaking information about her to the tabloids, when in fact he believes the newspapers were gleaning it by illegal means. He says this was one of the reasons she insisted on not having any protection officers after her divorce, and “if she’d had police protection with her in August 1997, she’d probably still be alive today”.
One of the targets of Prince Harry’s ire against the tabloid press is Duncan Larcombe, who was The Sun’s royal editor for several years and wrote a biography of the Prince called The Inside Story.
In his witness statement the Prince says that: “On the rare occasion that I spoke with him, he made me feel endlessly guilty for not liking him, so much so that I desperately tried to like him. With hindsight, I now feel like he was grooming me.
“He also offered to tell my ex-police protection officer, Bill Renshaw, all the secrets of the ‘dark arts’ and so on. Duncan would follow us everywhere and often turn up in places before we even got there- how he knew we would be there now seems obvious.”
Meghan has made me look at the media differently
The Prince says that when he was a soldier he had neither the time nor the inclination to read newspapers. Since meeting his wife Meghan he has started taking an interest in what is written about her, “due to the sheer astonishment of what they get away with”, he says in his statement.
Of the 238 newspaper articles he cites in his evidence in his legal case, he says he was aware of no more than 10 per cent of them at the time they were published, and that he would only normally pay attention if he saw “my ugly mug on the front page and would naturally be drawn to the story”.
But over the past six years, he says, “my wife has suffered so greatly at the hands of the tabloid press” that he has been forced to take an interest.
He cites
Jeremy Clarkson’s now infamous column about Meghan, in which he said she should be forced to walk through Britain being pelted with excrement, as one example, calling it “one of the most misogynistic and vile columns ever written”.
A comment which Clarkson
has since apologised for.
Sibling rivalry
The gulf between the two brothers is laid bare by Harry’s revelations about the settlement William quietly received in 2020 and which he claimed was further evidence of the secret pact between the Royal family and the media.
Making a clear dig at his brother, he said he had discovered during the course of litigation that William appeared to know “an awful lot more” about phone hacking than he did “although he did not tell me if that was the case.”
The Duke then used his witness statement to reveal that William had received “a huge sum of money” from NGN in 2020.
Not for the first time, Harry queried why he and his brother had received different treatment.
“NGN still settled his claim for a huge sum of money in 2020 without subjecting him to a similar strike out application, without any of the public being told, and seemingly with some favourable deal in return for him going ‘quietly’ so to speak,” he said.
“This goes to prove the existence of this secret agreement between the institution and senior executives at NGN.”
Otherwise, he claimed, William would not have waited until 2019 to pursue his complaints when senior royal aides had brought their own claims and settled them back in 2012.
This was “precisely the reason” why he had been forced to wait until 2019, he alleged.
“If I’d been allowed to put in a claim earlier and hold NGN properly to account then of course I would have, especially given my antipathy towards NGN and the tabloid press in general.”
The Duke said he was not surprised that senior courtiers had opted not to discuss phone hacking with him when he was younger because he was considered the “irresponsible” brother.
Harry breaks free from “the institution”
In 2019 Prince Harry decided to go it alone in his battle with the tabloid press. He had become frustrated at the lack of progress, and “it was suggested to me that I break with royal tradition and instruct my own solicitor to commence phone hacking proceedings against NGN on my behalf”.
He decided that bringing a claim via Gerrard Tyrrell, “the institution’s lawyer taking direction from Clarence House, was a no-go”, so he found another firm to take on the case.
Shortly before his wedding in 2018, he had been told by Mr Tyrrell, of Harbottle & Lewis, that “nothing could be done as NGN were not in a position to apologise to Her Majesty the Queen and the rest of the Royal family at that stage on account of the fact that if they did so, they would have to admit that not only was the News of the World involved in phone hacking but also the Sun and that was something they couldn’t afford to do until the end of the litigation”.
The Prince was on an official tour in Africa when he “informed my grandmother and father by phoning them” - and also Prince William and the late Queen’s private secretary Sir Edward Young - “of our intention to make a public statement should it be needed”. His solicitors issued a court claim on Sep 27, 2019.
James Murdoch the kindred spirit
James Murdoch, the younger son of Rupert, struck Prince Harry as a “kindred spirit” when they met in around 2020 because they had both broken away from the constraints of their families.
The Prince says in his witness statement that he met James at a Google camp, where “he made a real effort to try and come and talk to me despite my security detail trying to keep me away from him - presumably they thought I’d get into a heated argument with him or worse”.
James Murdoch had been criticised by a parliamentary committee over his failure to get a grip on phone hacking while he was in charge of the Murdochs’ UK newspapers, but by the time he met Prince Harry, he had resigned from the board of NewsCorp because of disagreements over editorial content.
The Prince says: “I got the distinct impression that having broken away from the cult that is the Murdoch dynasty, he was starting to show signs that he wanted to do things differently and make amends for the past.
“Given that he had broken away from his family’s history, and I was about to do the same with mine, I felt that we were kindred spirits of sorts.”
He and the Duchess of Sussex later had a Zoom call with him and his wife, and during an on-stage interview at a JP Morgan event, the Prince congratulated James - who was in the audience - on going in a different direction from his father.
The Prince does not specify in his statement where the Google camp was held, but he is known to have attended such an event in Sicily in 2019.
Billed as a climate change conference, it was heavily criticised at the time because A-list delegates flew to the Italian island on 114 private jets.
Rebekah Brooks
The Prince says in his statement that he was “absolutely astonished” when Rebekah Brooks, the current chief executive of News UK, was cleared of phone hacking by a jury at the Old Bailey in 2014.
Ms Brooks was the editor of the News of the World when some of the alleged phone hacking took place, and in her executive role she was later deeply involved in discussions with Buckingham Palace about how to resolve the Royal family’s complaints about hacking.
The Prince says: “Having met her once with my father when she was hosting The Sun Military Awards at the Imperial War Museum in London and having seen her essentially masquerading as someone she wasn’t by using the military community to try and cover up all the appalling things that she and her newspapers had done, I felt this surprise at her acquittal even more personally, especially as I had been duped into thinking that she was okay at our meeting.”
He says she “ignored” his requests to settle the dispute over phone hacking before his wedding to Meghan Markle in 2018.
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