Hugh Grant has joined the chorus calling for a police investigation into criminality at News Group Newspapers (NGN) following this week’s high-profile settlement and apology with Prince Harry.
Appearing on the BBC’s Today program this morning, the BAFTA-winning star and Board Director of the Hacked Off campaign group said the “aim” of Harry’s initial case and of Grant’s own 2024 case against NGN had been to spark a “new criminal investigation” against NGN, but both had fallen foul of the UK civil courts legal system.
He said the job was not done “by any means” since the Harry settlement, coming after Harry’s lawyer David Sherborne said the Prince and fellow complainant Tom Watson “join others in calling for the police and Parliament to investigate not only the unlawful activity now finally admitted [by NGN], but the perjury and cover ups along the way.”
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Harry’s reported eight-figure settlement came several months after Notting Hill star Grant settled a privacy claim against NGN. At the time, Grant said he could have faced a bill of up to £10M ($12.3M) even if he had won due to a quirk of the British legal system.
After NGN settled with Harry this week, the company issued an apology and for the first time acknowledged criminal activity at The Sun, although the group immediately stressed that this was carried out by “private investigators, not journalists.” NGN’s follow-up statement also said the settlement “draws a line under the past and brings an end to this litigation.”
Had Harry’s case gone to trial for several weeks, many including Grant believe that NGN would have had to defend itself against wider allegations of a cover-up regarding privacy. Grant today noted that “the people giving the orders [back then] are still there [at NGN] in positions of great power.”
A Metropolitan Police spokesperson told the BBC of the investigation: “We await any correspondence from the parties involved, which we will respond to in due course.”
Earlier, Met chief Mark Rowley stressed to Today that the issues have been investigated in the past. “There was a massive series of investigations done sort of a decade or so ago,” he said. “It finished more recently than that, many, many millions of pounds, hundreds officers were involved for a long period of time. There were many prosecutions, those investigations were closed, if they send us a bunch of material, we’ll reflect on that and make our judgments. Much of the material in the civil litigation actually came from those investigations and was requested through legal processes by the litigants. So let’s see whether they produce anything.”
Leveson 2
Grant also called on the new Labour government to conduct a ‘Leveson 2’ inquiry into phone hacking and privacy but Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy has already said this will not take place.
“I have some sympathy for politicians terrified of the Murdoch organization and the power to destroy their careers,” said Grant, who is BAFTA nominated this year for Heretic.
“But this is why we now need leadership from the Prime Minister. If a government is there for anything, particularly a Labour government, it is to protect the public from abuses and criminalities of big corporations.”