Prince Harry court latest news: Duke set to testify in landmark court appearance after skipping first day

Prince Harry is due to give evidence in a historic appearance at the High Court on Tuesday in his case against the Daily Mirror’s publisher over alleged unlawful information gathering after he skipped the first day of the trial on Monday.

The Duke of Sussex is suing Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) for damages, claiming journalists at its titles – which also include the Sunday Mirror and Sunday People – were linked to methods including phone hacking, so-called “blagging” or gaining information by deception, and use of private investigators for unlawful activities.

The duke had been expected to arrive at court on Monday but will now testify on Tuesday, becoming the first prince to do so for 130 years.

David Sherborne, acting for Harry, said the duke’s relationship with his brother, the Prince of Wales, suffered “mistrust” because of articles published by the Mirror publisher, the court heard on Monday.

This comes as it has been revealed Harry is battling on another front as his US visa is set to be challenged in court after he admitted illegal drug use in his memoir Spare.

A royal scandal in the Victorian era involving gambling, an illegal card game, and accusations of cheating set the scene for the last time a prince stepped into the witness box in a British court.

Royal fans have to look back 130 years to find accounts of an “extremely nervous” and pale-faced future King Edward VII giving evidence in a slander case after a spectacular falling out with his best friend in 1890.

Centred on the illicit card game of baccarat, the furore – dubbed “the royal baccarat scandal” or “the Tranby Croft affair” – proved an unedifying moment for all involved, and distinctly damaging for the crown.

After the Prince of Wales’s former close friend, Lieutenant Colonel Sir William Gordon-Cumming, 4th Baronet, of the Scots Guards, was accused of cheating in the game, Lt Col Gordon-Cumming took his accusers to court and the prince acted as a key witness for the defence.

The “poor showing” of the nervous Prince of Wales in particular proved “disastrous” for the royal family, according to royal commentator Richard Fitzwilliams.

The US government is set to be challenged in court over its decision not to disclose the reasoning behind admitting the Duke of Sussex into the country, despite his admissions of illegal drug use.

Prince Harry’s reference to taking cocaine, marijuana and psychedelic mushrooms in his memoir Spare prompted a conservative Washington DC think tank to question why he was allowed into the US in 2020.

The Heritage Foundation brought the lawsuit against the Department for Homeland Security (DHS) after a Freedom of Information Act request was rejected – claiming it was of “immense public interest”.

The duke had been expected to arrive at court on Monday but will not appear until Tuesday.

The hearing in London heard Harry had flown to the UK from Los Angeles in the US on Sunday night, as he was celebrating his daughter Lilibet’s second birthday.

Mr Justice Fancourt, the judge hearing the case, said he was “a little surprised” to hear that the duke would not be attending court on Monday.

Set to enter the witness box on Tuesday morning, Harry is due to face up to a day-and-a-half of cross-examination from MGN’s barrister.

The last time a prince testified in court was when the future King Edward VII appeared as a witness in June 1891 in the Tranby Croft Affair case to give evidence on a slander accusation arising from a card game.

William Gordon-Cumming, a lieutenant-colonel in the Scots Guards, was accused of cheating at the game baccarat at a house party at Tranby Croft in East Yorkshire where Bertie was a guest.

Harry’s appearance is thought to be the first time a senior member of the royal family has personally appeared in court proceedings since 2002, when the Princess Royal pleaded guilty to a charge under the Dangerous Dogs Act after her pet bit two children in Windsor Great Park.

Andrew Green KC, for MGN, said Harry’s claim had “become rather fantastical”.

The barrister said: “The defendant’s position is that there is simply no evidence capable of supporting the finding that the Duke of Sussex was hacked, let alone on a habitual basis.”

He said that payment records used in the duke’s claim “simply do not demonstrate unlawful conduct or knowledge thereof”.

He also said that there was a lack of call data in Harry’s case, telling the court: “There is no call data whatsoever for the Duke of Sussex and scant call data for his associates.”

Mr Green later said the duke faced “a very difficult starting point for the claimant proving he was habitually hacked”.

The barrister also said a suggestion that its journalists had hacked the phone of the late Diana, Princess of Wales was “total speculation”.

He told the court: “Mr Sherborne’s suggestion that MGN’s journalists hacked her phone is total speculation without any evidential basis whatsoever.”

“The letters you were shown, to Michael Barrymore, are not evidence of voicemail interception,” Mr Green said, adding that “plainly no such finding could be made”.

Harry’s claim is being heard alongside three other “representative” claims during a trial which began last month and is due to last six to seven weeks.

The three other representative claimants are Coronation Street actor Michael Turner, known professionally as Michael Le Vell, who is best known for playing Kevin Webster in the long-running soap, former Coronation Street actress Nikki Sanderson, and comedian Paul Whitehouse’s ex-wife Fiona Wightman.

Mr Green said voicemail interception was denied in all four cases and that there was “no evidence or no sufficient evidence”.

The barrister continued: “There is some evidence of the instruction of third parties to engage in other types of unlawful information gathering in respect of each of the claimants, save for Mr Turner whose claim is entirely denied, and MGN has made pleaded admissions in respect thereof.

“MGN unreservedly apologises for all such instances of unlawful information gathering, and assures the claimants that such conduct will never be repeated.”

Harry’s individual case against Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) got underway on Monday.

Barrister David Sherborne claimed the duke was subjected to unlawful information-gathering activity “right from when he was a young boy at school” into adulthood, adding: “Nothing was sacrosanct or out of bounds.”

He continued: “Every part of the prince’s life during these years was invaded by these three papers using these unlawful methods.”

The barrister said, contrary to some criticism of Harry, it was “the use of these methods by a national media group that has brought him here, not some vendetta against the press generally”.

Mr Sherborne has previously claimed that unlawful information gathering was “habitual and widespread” at MGN’s titles over almost two decades.

The barrister told the court on Monday that Harry was “the biggest target”, adding that it was “implausible” there were no admissions from MGN except one.

He claimed that Harry’s phone “would have been hacked on multiple occasions”, adding that his details appeared in the PalmPilot of a journalist who was one of the “most prolific” phone hackers.

Mr Sherborne later said: “What he has been able to do as a result by bringing this claim, he has been able to focus the attention that comes with his position on these activities and the fact that they have been carried out not just by journalists, but they have been concealed, even though they were known about by the senior members of the board of this PLC, as well as the legal department.

“It is the focus on these activities and bringing the defendant to account which is why he is bringing this action.”

Mr Sherborne told the High Court in London that “no aspect of the young prince’s life was safe” from press intrusion and that details of his relationship with ex-girlfriend Chelsy Davy “were all revealed and picked apart by the three Mirror Group titles”.

The court was later told that a 2003 article detailed an alleged row between the duke and his brother William, now the Prince of Wales, over their mother’s former butler, Paul Burrell.

“Brothers can sometimes disagree,” Mr Sherborne continued, adding: “But once it is made public in this way and their inside feelings revealed in the way that they are, trust begins to be eroded.”

Mr Sherborne also said the late Diana, Princess of Wales was a “huge target” for MGN’s newspapers, adding that certain alleged unlawful activities in relation to her would have also affected Harry.

He read out two letters from Diana to entertainer Michael Barrymore, which referred to private meetings between the pair, and in one of the letters Diana referred to being “devastated” to learn that the “Daily Mirror” had contacted her office about him and their meetings.

The Duke of Sussex is due to give evidence at the High Court on Tuesday in his case against the Daily Mirror’s publisher over alleged unlawful information gathering.

Set to enter the witness box on Tuesday morning, Harry is due to face up to a day-and-a-half of cross-examination from MGN’s barrister.

Harry alleges about 140 articles published between 1996 and 2010 contained information gathered using unlawful methods, and 33 of these have been selected to be considered at the trial.

One of the articles put before the trial is a December 2003 report from The People, headlined: “Wills… Seeing Burrell is only way to stop him selling more Diana secrets. Harry no… Burrell’s a…”.

Mr Sherborne referred to the article which detailed an alleged row between the duke and his brother over Mr Burrell.

The barrister said: “Even at this very early formative stage, the seeds of discord between these two brothers are starting to be sown.”

“Brothers can sometimes disagree,” Mr Sherborne said, adding: “But once it is made public in this way and their inside feelings revealed in the way that they are, trust begins to be eroded.”

The barrister added: “One can see how the mistrust can set in from an early age, exactly because of this type of activity.”

The brothers are now estranged, with the breakdown in their relationship laid bare in the duke’s controversial autobiography Spare, which claims William physically attacked Harry and teased him about his panic attacks.

Harry’s claim is being heard alongside three other “representative” claims during a trial which began last month and is due to last six to seven weeks.

Mr Sherborne said that in his witness statement, yet to be made public, the duke described the “constant stream of stories” about his relationship with Ms Davy.

The barrister told the High Court the duke referred to “how little chance this relationship was given because of this” and described how it affected his relationships going forward.

Zimbabwean-born Chelsy dated Harry for about seven years. They coped with a long-distance relationship while the duke was training in the Army and overseas and Chelsy was at university in South Africa.

They split in early 2009 and, after both reportedly had flings, rekindled their relationship, and in May 2010 Ms Davy made a rare public appearance to watch Harry receive his wings after completing his Army Air Corps helicopter pilot course.

The reunion was not permanent and the couple broke up again. They remained friends and she attended his wedding to Meghan Markle in 2018.

Mr Sherborne said: “As he explains, it was as if they never felt they were on their own, which placed a huge amount of strain on their relationship and ultimately led Ms Davy to decide a royal life was not for her.”

Mr Sherborne added: “It also caused their circle of friends to become smaller and smaller, meaning that relationships were lost entirely unnecessarily.”