What Harry’s legal win could mean for press regulation

The phone-hacking saga has just been given a new lease of life after a judge ruled that Prince Harry can take the Daily Mail to court over claims that it used ‘unlawful information gathering’ in stories about him. The newspaper has never been involved in the historic hacking claims, and said evidence to the contrary assembled by the Duke of Sussex and six other high-profile claimants was ropey and that it was brought ‘far too late’ for the trial to take place. The High Court today disagreed: Mr Justice Nicklin said the newspaper group hadn’t delivered a ‘knockout blow’ to the ‘claims of any of these claimants’.

This matters. Newspaper sales are declining in Britain and so far more than £1.1 billion (£900 million alone to lawyers) has been paid out by Rupert Murdoch’s News UK to those claiming they had been hacked by the Sun and the News of the World – even if the evidence was circumstantial.

This case is likely to add to the drumbeat for state regulation of the press

Associated Newspapers Ltd (publisher of the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday and MailOnline) had been refusing to settle with claimants, seeing this as a racket. It said it would bear the cost of a trial rather than become the next victim of the hacking-claims industry (which I wrote about in The Spectator recently).

Now, Lord Rothermere, owner of the Mail and Mail on Sunday, will be dragged into a long court battle: the sort that Murdoch has paid a lot of money to avoid. Rothermere’s newspapers are accused by Harry and six others, including the stars Sir Elton John and Liz Hurley, as well as Baroness Doreen Lawrence, of hiring private investigators to use listening devices, ‘blagging’ private medical records and accessing and recording private phone conversations.

Today’s ruling has been described by Hugh Grant, a Hacked Off campaigner, as a ‘significant blow to the Daily Mail’. This case is likely to add to the drumbeat for state regulation of the press, a policy included in the last Labour manifesto – and one that Keir Starmer has refused to rule out, should he take the keys to No. 10 next year.

This article is from The Spectator’s Lunchtime Espresso. Sign up for the daily briefing email for free here.