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

Prince Harry’s fellow claimant, former Coronation Street actor Nikki Sanderson, is now the focus of today’s proceedings.

Sanderson is bringing a damages claim against MGN over the alleged unlawful gathering of information, including by voicemail interception. In May, the 39-year-old told the High Court that she was “physically assaulted” in the street following “false insinuations” published in articles by MGN.

The details of the exact articles in question have yet to be disclosed.

Sanderson first joined Coronation Street in 1999 as Candice Stowe, recurring character Sarah Platt’s (Tina O’Brien) friend from school. Prior to that, she had appeared in the children’s drama called Children’s Ward.

My colleague Peony Hirwani has more detail in this report:

The Mirror’s former royal editor Jane Kerr has rejected the suggestion that Prince Harry was “a highly prized target” for journalists while at Eton, Peter Stubley reports.

The Duke of Sussex’s barrister David Sherborne questioned her in detail about two stories which referred to Harry breaking his thumb aged 16 and catching “kissing disease” glandular fever aged 17.

Mr Sherborne said they were “hardly consistent” with her claim that the princes were “off limits” while they were still at school.

Kerr said the injury story was a follow up of a Press Association story ‘which has effectively been confirmed by the palace.”

She claimed the information that doctors had told Harry not to play football for a few weeks “would have come from the palace”. She rejected the suggestion she would have got the information from a private investigator.

Asked about the kissing story, which was marked “exclusive”, she said: “it was such a long time ago, I was writing hundreds of stories, I don’t remember the background of the story.”

Mr Sherborne said “stories about Prince Harry were a highly prized target”.

Kerr said: “I don’t think that’s true. It wouldn’t have been my decision to run the story, it would have been the editor [Piers Morgan].

Former Mirror editor Piers Morgan could have “injected” information that he had obtained from voicemails into royal stories, the High Court was told.

David Sherborne, acting for the Duke of Sussex, made the allegation while questioning the newspaper’s former royal correspondent Jane Kerr, as he noted that one story about Harry contained information that did not appear in other reports and references to the the private thoughts of the then-Prince Charles.

“That is information that would precisely have come from people listening to voicemail messages,” the lawyer said, adding: “Mr Morgan may have injected information he obtained from voicemails.”

Ms Kerr replied: “I can’t say he didn’t but I think it would be highly unlikely”, and said that if Morgan contributed to a story she did not know where the information came from.

“He might say he had a been speaking to somebody at the palace,” Kerr said. “He took a really genuine interest in royal stories and the work and would often come over.”

Here is a courtroom sketch of former Mirror journalist Jane Kerr, who has been questioned by Prince Harry’s lawyer David Sherborne once again this morning, with the duke’s fellow claimant, Coronation Street actor Nikki Sanderson, soon to follow.

One journalist has this take on the atmosphere in the High Court today.

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”.

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.”