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The former editor of the Mail on Sunday has denied claims he misled the Leveson inquiry into press standards over the newspaper’s involvement with corrupt private investigators.
Appearing at the high court, Peter Wright, who edited the Sunday newspaper from 1998 to 2012, said some of the allegations aimed at the title – which include landline tapping and bugging – were “just incredible”.
Prince Harry is one of seven claimants accusing Associated Newspapers Ltd (ANL), which publishes the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday, of composing stories based on unlawful information gathering.
ANL denies all the allegations, which range from using private investigators to secure ex-directory phone numbers to allegations of bugging windowsills. ANL has described the claims as both lurid and preposterous.
Wright was confronted over evidence he gave to the Leveson inquiry in 2012 that focused on the Mail on Sunday’s relationship with Steve Whittamore, a private investigator who was convicted in 2005 and given a conditional discharge.
David Sherborne, the lead barrister for the claimants, pointed to Wright’s Leveson claim that financial records of Whittamore’s work for the Mail on Sunday did not include details of his activities.
Sherborne showed Wright invoices that did appear to list activities, such as finding car registration numbers and ex-directory phone numbers. Another appeared to reference a “blag” – often the practice of obtaining information by deception.
However, Wright said that during the Leveson inquiry, he had been relaying information passed on to him by a managing editor and had not seen any records himself.
He also said the invoices with more details on them were separate from the payment records – and that he had only become aware of them far more recently.
Sherborne said Wright “deliberately gave the inquiry a false impression” that invoices did not reveal very much.
Wright replied: “I have only seen these [invoice] sheets, most of them, in the run-up to this trial.”
He also said that by early 2004, he had become “particularly worried” about the use of Whittamore and an order all but banning his use by Mail on Sunday journalists was sent out.
In written submissions, Wright said to the best of his knowledge, the paper did not “carry out or commission, or knowingly use information derived from phone hacking, landline phone tapping, bugging vehicles or using sticky window mini-microphones, computer or email hacking as alleged in these claims”.
He noted that many of the most serious claims rested on a witness statement by the private investigator Gavin Burrows, who has now disowned the document and claimed his signature was forged.
Wright said stories about celebrities and royals often came from their “hangers-on” who were known to brief journalists.
Wright gave his evidence after the judge, Mr Justice Nicklin, questioned the relevance of the claimants’ allegations that several ANL figures had misled the Leveson inquiry.
He said he was concerned that while the accusations were being made in open court, he may not rule one way or the other on them. He suggested that was unfair to those accused of misleading the inquiry.
The case continues.
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