Sources were behind Harry stories, not hacking - Mirror lawyer

As the media pack up their cameras and head home, let's recap what we learned on Prince Harry's first day being cross-examined in court:

• Prince Harry accused Mirror Group Newspapers of hacking his voicemails when he was a teenager, saying it made him feel he "couldn't trust anybody"
• He said he has "experienced hostility from the press" since he was born
• Prince Harry said editors and journalists from the newspaper group were responsible for “causing pain and upset” and “inadvertently death”
• He said he developed "acute paranoia" of being under surveillance
• The Mirror group's lawyer said he had sympathy for the duke, but denied journalists' actions were "all unlawful"

Read our full story here.

Before we pack up for the day, it's worth revisiting one exchange in court from earlier.

The lawyer for Mirror Group Newspapers, Andrew Green, asked Prince Harry about a story in the Mirror in 2005, which claimed Chelsy Davy was going to "dump him" amid speculation he'd flirted with a mystery brunette at a party.

Green put it to the prince that there was “nothing unlawful” about the journalist who wrote the piece speaking to people at the party.

He replied: “No, if that’s what she did.”

Green told the court that a quote in the story was attributed to “a pal”, but it had been revealed that the source was Davy’s uncle.

In reply, Prince Harry called it “convenient” to attribute the source to someone like that.

He said that attributing information to a pal or a friend “is a particular hallmark of phone hacking”, adding: “It is what I would do if I was doing something illegal.”

Prince Harry's 49-page witness statement was published just as he began giving evidence in court this morning.

We've spent the day poring through it - here are some of the key bits:

• He accuses Piers Morgan of intimidation, saying as a consequence of bringing this claim, he and his wife have been subject to “horrific personal attacks”
• Knowing journalists from Mirror Group Newspapers were listening to his voicemails created a “huge amount of paranoia”, he says
• The prince alleges that the tabloid press cast members of the Royal Family into specific roles, with him being cast as a "thicko", "cheat" and "underage drinker"
• Prince Harry says rumours James Hewitt was his biological father were “hurtful, mean and cruel”
• He says the press and UK government are at “rock bottom”, and accuses the media of getting into bed with the government.

Read our article in full here.

And that's it for today - the session at the High Court has drawn to a close.

Just before it ended, Prince Harry was told not to discuss his evidence with anyone.

The trial moves to two stories in 2005, concerning Prince Harry's long-regretted appearance at a fancy dress party in a Nazi uniform.

The Mirror's claimed Chelsy Davy was going to "dump him" amid speculation he'd flirted with a mystery brunette at the same party.

One article says Chelsy was “furious” and had given her boyfriend a “tongue-lashing down the phone”.

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"The article also reports that Chelsy had phoned me 'at my father’s Highgrove home'," says the prince in his statement.

"The details about our telephone communications are not attributed to anyone, so how could the defendant’s journalists know about this?"

Prince Harry says two days before the story went out, call data shows someone at the Mirror Group made brief but aborted calls to his friend Guy Pelly, in circumstances that looked like an attempt to access his voicemail.

Mirror group lawyer Andrew Green says that Prince Harry's trip to meet Chelsy Davy's family was already well-known across the media.

He says the Mail on Sunday had already named and pictured the resort the day before.

Prince Harry says he was not surprised because journalists had checked into the hotel before he arrived.

The prince says that the article is suggestive of investigators "blagging" information about flights - meaning conning the details out of people who legitimately hold them.

But Green suggests the information came from Davy's uncle. Prince Harry says that it was highly unlikely the uncle would have known the flight plans.

We're now on to Prince Harry's relationship with Chelsy Davy, his first long-term relationship.

In December 2004, the Daily Mirror reported that he was meeting her father on a holiday on a small island off Mozambique.

The article includes pictures of Chelsy and Prince Harry and details of how he had met her wider family.

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"It also states I would be flying back to Britain on 19 December," says the prince.

"I am at a complete loss as to how these details were obtained. Details of my travel plans, including dates I would be flying, were not released by the palace for security reasons, yet the specific date I would return to Britain was published days in advance."

Prince Harry’s been closely questioned on why he says in his witness statement he did not want to meet his mother’s former butler, but in his book Spare he said he did.

He now tells the court: “I can’t remember whether I wanted a meeting with him or not.”

So does he now remember calling Prince William and describing Paul Burrell as a “two-faced s***”?

“I was leaving voicemails for my brother, and that is a terminology I used describing Mr Burrell, yeah,” Prince Harry says.

The Mirror group's lawyer Andrew Green suggests there were sources talking about this story within the Royal Household.

The Evening Standard’s royal correspondent Robert Jobson for one seemed to have spoken to them.

“I wouldn't necessarily call them sources,” Prince Harry responds. “Based on a lot of what he’s written, they may be imaginary sources.”

A key article in Prince Harry's case was in The People in 2003, where he is clearly alleging possible phone hacking.

It revealed a private disagreement between the prince and his brother, Prince William, over how to handle Paul Burrell, their late mother’s former butler, whom they thought should stop talking to journalists about her private life.

The story quotes Prince Harry calling Burrell a "two-faced s***" - and he says the journalists may have got that from a voicemail interception.

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Prince Harry says: "Our disagreement over to how to handle the situation going forward was not something I wanted splashed across the defendant’s newspapers, and I have no idea how the defendant’s journalists obtained the information within the article.

"A ‘senior royal source’ is quoted within the article, reflecting my exact private feelings - including that I was 'dead against any meeting' and that a meeting would be 'pandering to Burrell’s attention-seeking and self-interest'.

"I also would have used the phrase “two-face s***”, as is reported and believe this could have been lifted directly from a voicemail I had left," he says in his witness statement.

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Court has resumed after a short break, and the lawyer for Mirror Group Newspapers, Andrew Green KC, is still cross-examining Prince Harry.

Green - described by one of his former clients as "a beast in court" - is a specialist in commercial law and has been cross-examining the prince since 10:30 this morning.

Prince Harry submitted a witness statement for the trial, based on 33 articles which he claims included unlawful information gathering by the publisher, including phone hacking.

Green has been basing his cross-examination off of these articles, going through each one in turn.

We're still digging through Prince Harry's 49-page witness statement, and we've just found a bit more from his time at Eton.

Prince Harry says he was “extremely worried” he would be expelled from the school following press reports that he was using drugs.

He refers to a front-page Daily Mirror story, published in January 2002, following a series of stories by the News of the World, with the headline: “Harry's Cocaine Ecstasy and GHB Parties”.

In his witness statement he says these stories had “a huge impact on my life”.

He writes that Eton had a “zero drugs policy” and he was “extremely worried I was going to be expelled”.

He continues: “These articles were also written at a time when there had been an agreement between the press and the Royal Family, following the death of my mother, that my brother and I should be able to go through our education without constant scrutiny and interruption.

“It seemed to me there was never any let up in the press coverage of every detail of my childhood, by the defendant’s journalists and others.”

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The court is just taking a quick break, so let's step back from all the detail and recap the basics:

Prince Harry is currently being cross-examined in the High Court.

The prince, and three other people, are taking a newspaper publisher to court, alleging information about them was illegally gathered to generate stories.

As part of this illegal gathering, they believe journalists from the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and The People exploited a security gap to access their voicemails and hear messages left by friends and family.

Mirror Group Newspapers has previously admitted phone hacking took place, but says it didn’t in these cases.

This is a test case - if Prince Harry and the other claimants win, the judge will use it to set the level of damages (amount of money) the publisher could pay in other cases from other celebrities.

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Sticking with Prince Harry's gap year in Australia, he says in his witness statement that a 2003 article about a private holiday on a beach was filled with photographs of him.

“I remember this day so clearly,” he writes.

“It was a public beach, but not busy or popular so I’m unclear how anyone had known we were there, to be in the right place at the right time to take photographs. I wasn’t aware of anyone taking photographs at the time.

“I only learnt recently that the Queen had asked one of her assistant private secretaries to ... take a house down the road from where I was staying, without me knowing.

“She was concerned about the extent of the coverage of my trip and wanted someone I knew to be nearby, in case I needed support.”

But the Mirror group's lawyer Andrew Green says that the London Evening Standard had been the first to report where he was - and the photographer had sold pictures to numerous newspapers.

In 2003 Prince Harry took a gap year, working on an Australian cattle ranch. The Daily Mirror reported concerns that media attention had left the prince sitting inside watching videos to avoid camera crews.

Other newspapers also covered this story.

Prince Harry’s witness statement includes a claim that Mirror Group Newspapers paid a private investigator £550 to have him watched in Australia.

But again, the publisher's lawyer Andrew Green suggests that stories about him were briefed by one of his aides, Mark Dyer, who had concerns about the press attention.

“You’d have to ask the journalist in question,” Prince Harry responds.

A brief pause in proceedings may have helped Prince Harry, who is facing more of a grilling from the Mirror publisher's lawyer about his claims of phone hacking.

“My mind’s gone blank for a moment,” Prince Harry said, in response to questioning about an article on his part in a school cadet event.

The lawyer cross-examining Prince Harry showed the same information had been put out in a press release from St James’s Palace and had been available on news wires, rather than any unlawful sources.

The prince has been in the witness box for several hours now and you can maybe sense the tiredness.

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Former Daily Mirror editor turned TV host Piers Morgan features three times by name in Prince Harry's written witness statement.

And in paragraph 194 (we're reading it all so you don't have to...), the prince launches a broadside.

"Unfortunately, as a consequence of me bringing my Mirror Group claim, both myself and my wife have been subjected to a barrage of horrific personal attacks and intimidation from Piers Morgan, who was the editor of the Daily Mirror between 1995 and 2004, presumably in retaliation and in the hope that I will back down, before being able to hold him properly accountable for his unlawful activity towards both me and my mother during his editorship."