Well, send him victorious-ish. In what amounts to an early Christmas present for Prince Harry, Mr Justice Fancourt has ruled today at the High Court that there was, in his stern description, ‘extensive’ phone hacking that took place at the Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) between 2006 to 2011, and even, hilariously, that this continued to occur ‘to some extent’ during the Leveson enquiry into media standards, suggesting the company was so entirely unabashed by the idea that they would be held up to scrutiny by the forces of the law that their murky little business continued.
Still, it was not a total victory for Prince Harry, much as he might have liked it to be. His case was said to be ‘proved in part’, rather than wholly. This was reflected in the amount that he has been granted in damages: £140,600. This is a considerable sum – bolstered by the detail that directors of MGN not only knew about the phone hacking, but ‘turned a blind eye and positively concealed it.’
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