Caroline Flack ‘knew phone was being hacked when dating Prince Harry’, mother says

Caroline Flack “knew her phone was being hacked” at the time she was seeing Prince Harry, the late TV presenter’s mother has claimed, echoing his claims in court yesterday.

Calling the Duke of Sussex “incredibly brave”, Christine Flack said Harry was “doing this for everybody” as he takes on Mirror Group Newspapers over allegations of unlawful information-gathering.

She said: “Carrie was the same [as the duke] in her life – whenever a story appeared in the paper, it causes distress among your friends and your family. She said, ‘Mum, have you said anything?’

“But when she was seeing Harry, she knew her phone was being hacked, so we used to use a different telephone, and I believe they tried hacking our phones as well.”

At yesterday’s hearing, the court heard how the duke grew to suspect his friend Caroline after the pair were photographed by photographers waiting under a car for them at a dinner party, with the pictures appearing in a 2009 story in The People headlined, “Harry’s date with Gladiator star”.

Prince Harry’s lawyer David Sherborne has resumed his cross-examination of journalist Jane Kerr, immediately returning to his questions about her commissioning of private investigators while working as an editor at the Mirror.

Mr Sherborne refers to an email sent to the publisher’s reporters in 2002, titled “searches”, telling them to inform the news desk if they want to use third-party companies – which, according to Mr Sherborne, means that editors authorising such requests would be aware of them.

With Ms Kerr saying that private investigative services typically used to find addresses in order to send reporters there, Mr Sherborne countered that this information could have been obtained from a site called Cameo.

While Ms Kerr said private investigators were used as a fallback when Cameo could not help, the barrister claimed it was because reporters sought to obtain details such as dates of birth and mother’s maiden names.

Former Mirror journalist Jane Kerr is back in the witness box this morning, after the judge criticised “timetabling” issues at the day’s close yesterday.

Prince Harry’s lawyer David Sherborne said he had around 90 minutes of further questions for the paper’s former royal editor, which was scheduled to start slightly earlier this morning, as Ms Kerr already had a prior appointment.

Samuel Fishwick, deputy editor of Independent Voices, was at the High Court yesterday. Here is his take on the Duke of Sussex’s historic testimony:

At first, things didn’t look good for Harry: try as we might to strain our ears, his voice deep and breathy, he didn’t put up a shred of hard evidence to explicitly prove any of the Mirror Group Newspapers’ stories – lurid as they were about his youthful misadventures – in question leant on “unlawful information gathering”.

Instead, coincidences were deemed “incredibly suspicious”; “highly suspicious”; or viewed with “incredible amounts of suspiciousness”. There was a lot of suspicion to go around. But where was the crunch? He says he’s been “consistently hacked” for 15 years and that “it could have been happening on a daily basis” – then added that the lack of evidence is “part of the reason I’m here”.

But the tide turned. The funny thing is that Harry actually wears the witness box rather well. He soaked up Green’s early barbs like a plush pin cushion. His broad shoulders filled it squarely. He shrugged off the punchy KC like a prize boxer for more than seven full hours. A bruising encounter, yes. But Green didn’t appear to land any palpable hits.

A former News of the World journalist has claimed “we did much worse” to King Charles as he defended claims of the press treatment of Prince Harry.

Asked whether, as someone who has admitted being involved in phone hacking, he feels any guilt or shame, the newspaper’s former deputy features editor Paul McMullan told Good Morning Britain: “Well not really, because we did much worse to his dad.

“And his dad just dismissed it [as], ‘oh, those annoying newspaper people’, and got over it.”

Accepting the host’s point that phone hacking is illegal, Mr McMullan said, “it was, but well you could say that taking drugs is illegal”.

Claiming to note that there is a “balance” between people in the public sphere’s mental health and press scrutiny of their behaviour, he continued: “I chased [Harry’s late] mother a lot … I chased her round the world for about five years.”

A royal expert has said that the radio silence from senior members of the royal family on Princess Lilibet Diana’s second birthday reflected the “strained relationship” between the King and Lilibet’s parents, my colleague Ellie Muir reports.

Last year, the official Twitter accounts for the royal family, King Charles and Queen Camilla, plus that of the Prince and Princess of Wales, all wished Lilibet a happy first birthday.

But as the young royal turned two on Sunday, neither of the three Twitter accounts publicly sent their birthday wishes to the young royal, who is the only daughter and second child of Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle.

Former Mirror editor Piers Morgan has claimed he will “maintain a dignified silence” until the Prince Harry’s phone hacking case has concluded, after the Duke of Sussex took aim at the presenter in his testimony this week.

Approached in the street by Channel 4 News reporters, Mr Morgan insisted that he “can’t say anything until this is over”.

Pressed again for this thoughts, he added: “I would love to, as you can probably imagine, but unusually I’m going to maintain a dignified silence until it is all over.”

Prince Harry’s decision to become the first royal in 130 years to enter a witness box has revealed a host of claims about his life and relationship with the British press, as he gave five hours of testimony in his blockbuster trial against The Mirror publisher.

Andy Gregory takes a look at some of the most explosive claims made by the prince:

Prince Harry’s legal case against the publisher of the Daily Mirror makes the front of several newspapers this morning.

Metro focuses on a claim by the duke that he found a tracker on the car of Chelsy Davies, his ex-girlfriend.

The Times, Telegraph and i cover comments by an “emotional” duke, who said he went to court to protect wife Meghan.

In a comment piece, the Daily Mail says King Charles must banish Harry to “private life” if he carries on his “facile assault” on the government.

Here’s how the UK press covered day two of the case:

Harry has never been very fond of exams, bless him, and this was certainly a cross one: the masterly Andrew Green KC peering down sternly, taking off his glasses to jab home his points, popping them back on again to peer incredulously at the prince whenever he said something silly, writes Samuel Fishwick

Read Samuel’s full piece here: