Prince Harry drags late Queen's courtier into phone hacking battle

The late Queen’s most senior courtiers were today dragged into Prince Harry’s legal battle against The Sun.

A judge backed the duke’s bid to see emails to and from Lord Christopher Geidt, private secretary to Her Majesty until 2017, and his successor Sir Edward Young.

According to Harry’s lawyers, the courtiers held high level discussions with newspaper executives in 2017 about receiving compensation and apologies ‘to the entire Royal household including the Queen’ for ‘unlawful information gathering’.

The move threatens to further widen Harry’s rift with the King and his brother William. The duke has previously claimed William received compensation from the newspaper while he was cut out of a ‘secret’ deal.

It emerged in the High Court that King Charles tried to ‘discourage and stymie’ Prince Harry from suing The Sun’s publisher.

The court was told that part of Harry’s case is that the royal institution had tried to block him from bringing his case. Reading from a passage in Harry’s case, the judge, Mr Justice Fancourt, said the duke claims his father and the royal family’s law firm, Harbottle & Lewis, ‘acted to discourage and stymie him in the bringing of his claim’.

David Sherborne, for the duke, said emails showed the late Queen had personally approved threatening the publisher with legal action if it did not respond.

Mr Sherborne read out an email that year from Prince Harry to his brother William and palace aides urging them to support ‘chasing up’ News UK, publisher of The Sun.

Harry said ‘it has been a year since this started’ and the publisher was ‘playing us’ with its alleged lack of response. In a reference to his brother, Harry wrote: ‘W, do you agree?’

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A string of emails between palace officials and senior executives at the publisher, including Rebekah Brooks and Robert Thomson who both served as chief executive, has been disclosed by the publisher. 

Mr Sherborne said they demonstrated there were discussions about the newspaper paying compensation and saying sorry to members of the royal family who had been hacked by journalists. 

He said: ‘They are significant. Here, they are saying they will consider apologising and giving recompense to the entire royal household including the Queen as well. That is something being dealt with only at the highest levels, it was hugely sensitive.’

But he claimed the email exchange was ‘not complete’ and there were ‘plainly’ further emails which his client had not been shown. The Duke applied to the court to order the publisher to conduct further searches of its email database for its messages with the palace courtiers.

The publisher has always rejected allegations of any wrongdoing by staff at The Sun. Opposing Harry’s application to see more emails, Anthony Hudson KC, for the publisher, said requesting further searches so close to the trial date would be ‘disproportionate, time consuming and costly’. 

But the judge agreed to Harry’s request, ordering the newspaper to search for further messages.

Harry is one of two claimants suing the newspaper group, along with Labour peer Lord Watson. A further 39 claimants who were part of their group legal action against the newspaper, including Spice Girl Melanie Brown, David Beckham’s father Ted, former WAG Louise Redknapp and Baroness Doreen Lawrence, have all now ‘recently’ settled out of court. 

It follows actor Hugh Grant settling the case in April for what he called ‘an enormous sum’ of money.

Now the cases of the Duke of Sussex, 40, and former Labour deputy leader Lord Watson, 57, are the only ones still active, and a six to eight week trial is due to start in January, although Mr Sherborne has previously said it was likely all the claimants could be forced to settle because they could be left with huge legal bills if they rejected a settlement offer, even if they won at trial.

Harry has previously claimed there was a ‘secret agreement’ struck behind his back by the palace and the publisher – a claim dismissed by the judge, Mr Justice Fancourt, last year as ‘improbable’. 

Harry’s lawyers have claimed Prince William settled a claim against the publisher ‘for a very large sum of money’ in 2020 as part of the supposed ‘secret agreement’.

The judge ruled last year that this showed the publisher was ‘willing to settle with Prince William rather than become embroiled in litigation, as it has with the Duke’.