Confidential documents used by Prince Harry and others “were obtained in violation of the orders of the Leveson inquiry,” the Supreme Court says.
Confidential documents used by Prince Harry and others in their privacy case against the Mail were obtained in violation of the orders of the Leveson inquiry, the Supreme Court was told yesterday.
Copies of financial ledgers from the publisher of the post titles were given to the 2011/12 press standards inquiry.
Under the protocol of the Leveson Inquiry, the documents were treated as confidential and the Chairman, Lord Justice Leveson, ordered that no documents such as these provided for the Inquiry ‘shall be published or made public’.
But the ledgers were passed on to lawyers acting for the Duke of Sussex, Baroness Lawrence and other public figures who are now trying to use them to claim that the Mail on Sunday and Daily Mail paid people to steal their private information, which vehemently denies it.
The Mail objects to the use of the confidential documents in this case, arguing that they contravene the ‘restriction order’ issued by Lord Justice Leveson under the Inquiries Act 2005, which ‘binds all persons’.
Prince Harry arrives at the Supreme Court yesterday
Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, arrives at the High Court in London
Baroness Doreen Lawrence arrives at the Supreme Court yesterday
David Sherborne, the plaintiffs’ lawyer, was also at the Leveson Inquiry, where he performed for several celebrities, including Hugh Grant, and where he also signed a “personal undertaking in writing” to Lord Justice Leveson that he “would not disclose, publish or use the documents’.
Yesterday, on day two of a Supreme Court hearing, Harry watched from the back of the court as his lawyer argued that he should now be allowed to use the confidential information to help his clients’ case. He was challenged by Mr Justice Nicklin, who suggested that Mr Sherborne was bound by his own confidentiality commitments to the Leveson inquiry. The judge told the lawyer, “You have no answer because you have committed yourself to protecting the confidentiality of these documents.”
Associated Newspapers lawyers said the fact that information from the ledgers had been published online in 2017 “does not release those who entered into the venture from their obligations.”
Mr Justice Nicklin has not yet made a decision on the Mail’s application.