Prince Harry vs The Daily Mail: What can we expect in court?

0:02Sky News, the full story first.

0:09Coming up, he's coming back. Prince Harry returns to the UK this week to face the Daily Mail in court. So what can we expect?

0:21Prince Harry is returning to the UK this coming week, bravely emerging from a life of Californian privacy to give evidence in a very public court case. The Duke of Sussex will be facing the Daily Mail, accusing it of unlawful news gathering, allegations the paper strongly denies. There's no official word on whether he'll see his father while he's here, but given recent history, a High Court judge might get more quality time with him than the King. It's just the latest chapter in Harry's long-running battle with the British press, an industry of which he's always had an understandable scepticism, given its involvement in his mother's death.

0:54So, what's really at stake in this case? Why does a man who says he hates the spotlight keep stepping back into it? And can you ever truly escape the tabloids if you flee to Montecito? I will hear to explain our Royal Correspondent, Laura Bunda. Good to see you, Laura. Hello. And Katie Spencer, our Arts and Entertainment Correspondent. Hiya, Katie. Hello, hiya. Let's start with the basics then. Why is Harry coming back? OK, so this is Harry versus the tabloid press round three. And the reason I say round three is because we've been here before, basically. So he has this huge mission to take on the press and expose what he believes the dark arts of journalism they've been deploying.

1:33And we've already had Harry versus Mirror Group newspapers. That was in 2023, which was a partial victory, but a significant, very significant victory for him there. And he settled about this time last year, actually, with news groups, the publishers of The Sun and the defunct News of the World as well. So this is Harry now taking on the mail, basically. And by that, it's associated newspapers, but includes the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday and Mail Online. We're going to see some similar things, though, or hear some similar things, aren't we? Because, again, it's a similar sort of time frame to the other cases.

2:04It's starting from the early 90s through to the sort of 2010s. But also it is similar along the lines of alleged secretly placing listening devices inside of cars, homes, allegedly paying police officials, blagging information through pretending to be other people, through hospitals and bank accounts and things like that. Yeah, all does sound rather familiar. But of course, on this occasion, he's not the only one that's going after the male group. No, this is blockbuster. I mean, it's Harry plus six other claimants. And I don't think the High Court will have seen a case like this before with this kind of number of huge household names coming in.

2:42Who are we talking about? Katie's. Well, Sir Elton John and his husband, David Furnish, are perhaps the biggest names involved in this. We believe that they're going to be giving their evidence remotely, though. So Elizabeth Hurley, the actress, Sadie Frost as well. Sadie Frost's former husband, Jude Laws, expected to come and give evidence at one stage. Central to the claimants that are a part of this, though, Baroness Doreen Lawrence, whose son Stephen was, of course, murdered. She's part of this claim as well, as is Sir Simon Hughes, the Liberal Democrat MP. Quite the dinner party guest list, isn't it?

3:11But I suppose, given that we are going to be hearing from Elton John via video link, the question then becomes, are we going to be hearing from Harry? Yes, in a nutshell, yes. Do you remember, cast your mind back to June 2023, Harry came to the High Court in London, the first senior royal to give evidence to take the witness box since the 1890s. So, yeah, it was a big moment for him to do this. And don't forget, it's awkward for the family, isn't it? Because these are the king's courts that justice sort of stops with the king. It's justice in the name of the crown, basically. So Harry will be there.

3:44We know he's going to be in court. We've been told the first day, the second day, and then on Thursday, he will be giving evidence himself. So it will be a big moment to hear from him. He will be having to relive some perhaps difficult headlines, difficult moments of his life as well. Very similar to, I think, what we saw in the case against Mirror Group. So the sorts of stories involving ex-girlfriends, antics he got up to, etc. It's a real statement, though, that he clearly sees this as a public interest fight. The fact that he wants to be there from day one. He's not giving evidence on the first day, but he wants to walk in with the other claimants and show that he means business with this.

4:20Does this court case have the potential to turn into a bit of a circus then? It's already turning into a bit of a pantomime, we should say, in the build up to this. One of the things that the claimants are going to be pulled apart on here is some of the people that are giving evidence. And these are private investigators who have done these allegedly morally dubious things. and they're being asked to sort of stand up the claimant's arguments here. So I think the Daily Mail really will be attempting to sort of rip apart their credibility. And already we've had these private investigators changing their stories, sort of falling out with each other just in the build up to the trial starting.

4:58I mean, someone who is absolutely indelibly associated with the Mail Group newspapers, their former Daily Mail editor, Paul Dacre. I mean, what about him and his involvement in this trial? He and Harry don't get on. I'm going to wager. I think that's probably a safe one to bet. But I think that's all the more reason why Harry will have wanted this to go to trial, because this is two days worth of evidence that we're slated to hear from Paul Dacre, who was, of course, the Daily Mail editor for 26 years. He's now the editor in chief of A &L. So he is a hugely significant, high up figure. It's hard to get higher than Paul Dacre, really.

5:32And it's a chance to put all of the questions that they haven't had a chance to put to him because Leveson Part 2 got cancelled. That never went ahead. That was supposed to be the opportunity for there to be some sort of corporate responsibility, corporate accountability, that people would be able to put their concerns to the big tabloid bosses. And they never got to have that. But I do seem to recall, Laura, that the last time that we saw Harry up in court or the last time we saw Harry's legal team up in court, the judge was pretty adamant that the scope of what was under discussion was not to be broadened.

6:05And it just feels like this might be the case where everything, everything in the kitchen sink comes out into the open. Yeah, I mean, there's been a lot of fairly dry legal backwards and forwards as to why Harry's team are trying to bring about new evidence right at the last minute. There's been a lot of criticism about that. I think Harry wants his moment. It has been such a personal mission for him. He wants to try and explain why the stories that he saw repeatedly published about him as a young man growing up could only have been published through, as he believes and alleges, the use of information that was illegally obtained.

6:42And because of the fact he now believes this was the case, all this caused him deep paranoia growing up when he'd see headlines saying, well, who's leaked something about me now? It can only be a handful of people who know me really well who had that information. Now he's saying, well, look, it's not that. There were private investigators at work here. My phones were being hacked. Bugs were being placed. deceitfully obtaining his personal private information was going on. And that's the reason. But it caused huge suffering to him. And, you know, let's not forget Harry's mother in all of this as well.

7:12He grew up with Diana being hounded by the press. He wholly blames them for her death as well. So there is a very strong element to that in this sort of mission that he's been on. But in terms of the claimants trying to throw the kitchen sink at this, they have already ahead of this been told by the judge, you can't bring anything more than the claims that you've already set out now because they tried to actually get into a story that Harry believes the male were involved in targeting Kate, the Princess of Wales but the judge ruled that they brought that allegation too late to the table so they might want to get into other parts of this because the scope could be huge but the judge has said we have to stick to this 10-week schedule.

7:49Katie, we know of the level of anger that Prince Harry has had over the years with various aspects of the press but people like Elton John and his husband David Furnisher What is their beef? I mean, Elizabeth Hurley, there is another person whose career is inextricably linked with the tabloid. You will see the details of what their claims are in the coming days as the claimants set out their arguments of exactly why they have brought this case. But there are very good reasons. I think if we take a look at Baroness Doreen Lawrence, hers is such a complicated relationship that she's had with the male.

8:21The mail, of course, were the ones that helped push justice forward in terms of her trying to get those who are accountable for her son's death arrested. So they, on one hand, were acting like they had all of Baroness Lawrence's best interests at heart, whilst allegedly secretly reading her phone messages, tapping landlines, accessing her bank account. So if we're talking about somebody that has an axe to grind with the Daily Mail, I mean, Baroness Lawrence, it will be so interesting to hear from her on how she feels she's been subjected to this awful intrusive behaviour. Laura, is everyone down at Buckhouse, Buckingham Palace, absolutely interested in everything Harry has to say?

9:01I mean, is there any genuine concern that what might be coming out of his mouth might be embarrassing, not just for the male group, but for the royals? I think there is always a sharp intake of breath every time Harry steps outside his mansion in Montecito. I think how bad can it get? Because we've had the memoir, we've had the interviews. He said an awful lot, hasn't he? I think they all accept that Harry has this axe to grind and rightly, in his view, wants to take it as far as he can. He has the wealth to finance this because that's one thing he's often said is that, you know, he can afford to take this case as far as it will go and he's prepared to.

9:38So I think Buckingham Palace will obviously be watching. There'll be no official statement whatsoever about this. But obviously it does have implications for his relationship with the wider family at the moment. I mean, he lives in pretty much exile, saying he can't bring his family to the UK at the moment. It doesn't feel safe. That's another court case he's had ongoing. But there is another decision being made about his security. So I think if he can overcome that hurdle and bring his family back to the UK, then we could start to see a thawing perhaps of relations. and we could start to see the whole family here more.

10:10But until that's sorted, I can't see that he'd bring certainly Meghan, his wife, and all his kids over. Anticipating a thawing in the relationship suggests that as of this moment, it's pretty chilly. Let's look at the king and then we'll look at his brother because they're quite different. With the king, we saw following the king's cancer diagnosis, Harry dashed over from LA and rushed straight to have that meeting with his father, which we knew took place. We saw him, then he flew straight home again. That was a very quick meeting. There was another meeting more recently in September last year.

10:37So Harry was over for an event and he took tea with the king at Clarence House. And no details were given as to how that meeting went. I think there is a lot of mistrust on both sides. But I think the fact the meeting had taken place, the fact that both of their spokespeople, their comms team, had been seen having a quite visible but coffee outside in the street, hadn't they, suggested to me that there were moves being made to improve relations there. And I think that will definitely continue. Look, I don't know the king personally, but he, we understand, is very sad about the state of affairs with Harry.

11:09It's not how he wants to see things played out. It's a very different story with Prince William, though. There's a lot of beef between the brothers. And I think for that relationship to mend, a lot more will need to happen. But certainly the king would be a positive step for that. When it comes to William, what is the nature of the issue between the two of them? There's been so much said in public. Harry has said so much. I think the memoir was a hugely damaging moment. the nature of Harry leaving life as a working royal, the arguments all around that, meant that the brothers, who were once so close, I mean, remember when they were as a foursome described as the Fab Four, it fell apart completely.

11:46I think what Harry said in the memoir really hurt William. I mean, some of the details, you know, exposed a lot about their relationship. Harry made a lot of allegations, didn't he? And all the things about bridesmaids, dresses, the wedding, all of that involving Kate. You know, they're very different personalities, OK? We know that William is kind of, he's the heir, yeah? So he's much steadier. Harry is kind of more of a firebrand. But I think most people would agree there was a Harry-shaped hole in the royal family when he left. Will that be filled? Will he come back? There is a future for him, I think, and it isn't just based in LA.

12:21Katie, can I just be a little bit of a cynic just for a second? Not doubting Harry's ambition to kind of put the press in its place, and for good reason it would appear on some of these charges, Does this not all kind of slightly play into the PR aspect of the House of Sussex over in Montecito? I mean, their star has been waning, that side of the Atlantic, and I just wonder if court cases like this, putting them back into the public consciousness a little bit more, might help. I mean, arguably you could say this is all Prince Harry has left, really, in terms of getting the publicity. He's put all of his money on red, hasn't he, on pursuing this at any cost, and so this is the publicity that he will get.

13:02Arguably, he has risked so much and given up so much by blindly sort of pursuing this and saying this will be his focus, including sort of living in a different country as a result of this. And here we are. Look, this is his moment. He will be being spoken about again. But this was the point of it, wasn't it? He wants the attention to be on this. He wants to expose what he feels was a wrongdoing that was put on him. And Laura, I mean, as I understand, correct me if I'm wrong here, This is actually literally the last of the cases that he has been bringing. So in essence, this is the end of his big old fight with the press.

13:36How successful has he been at, you know, redressing the balance, at having a proper pop at the industry? It's a good question, actually. Yeah, you're right. This is the last chapter in what has been a very consuming personal crusade for him. How successful? Well, he certainly would have looked at the Mirror Group victory as a big moment for him because the judge admitted that phone hacking was widespread. It was habitual that Harry's phone had been hacked. That's what he wanted to prove there. He settled with News Group but got the big apology from them as well. As a young man growing up in the glare of the media, I think he always felt that he, and he says this in his memoir, doesn't he, he was portrayed as the party prince, wasn't he?

14:18And it was a trope the tabloids love to give him. They love a moniker. And his was this. Yes. And it kind of affected him growing up, he argues, that, yes, he sort of played up to the names they gave him. It exacerbated what he was like. I think it had a really negative impact on him. It caused, you know, a lot of relationships to break down early on. He was looking at headlines and being dumped or about to be dumped and wondering where this information came from. And, you know, I will come back to Diana here as well, because he grew up being chased by paparazzi when she was trying to take them to school or various things.

14:54And so, yes, I think he will have seen the last two cases as victories. He maybe wanted to settle this one, but it's going all the way now. That's really telling, though, isn't it? I think you should bear in mind the fact that it doesn't appear that the publishers of the Daily Mail want to settle this, which might be a sign that perhaps it might not go the claimant's way. So if this is the end of the legal battle for Harry, at the case's conclusion, what next for him? He has the Invictus Games. I think most people would agree the Invictus Games is one of his big triumphs. And so that's coming to Birmingham next year.

15:30There's been a little talk as to whether or not the King could be involved when it comes to Birmingham. Could he give an opening address or something like that, which would be a massive moment for Harry. He, I think, would like to focus on the causes that he cares about. This is obviously me going on and on and on and on. I think it is a high stake gamble, this whole case for him, because if he loses, it's a big financial hit. I mean, we're talking tens of millions. But I think for him, reputationally, if he loses, he'll take a real hit as well, because he needs the support of the public to be able to come back here if he wants to come back to the UK more often.

16:06And he won't get that support if he loses a case. they're going to think, well, why did you spend all this time, all this money on a case that you've just lost when you could have been doing something far more worthwhile with your time. Laura, Katie, thanks very much indeed. Thank you. Thanks. And that's your lot for this special bonus edition of The Daily. Much, much more about the trial is available. Just head to the website or the app. Bye for now.