Piers Morgan hacked into my bank account, ‘two-faced’, Alastair Campbell told the High Court in Prince Harry hack v Mirror Group case
- Tony Blair’s former doctor in the textile industry said that Pearce intruded into his private finances
- Campbell worked for Mirror in the 1980s and 1990s, but says he hasn’t seen any phone hacking
Alastair Campbell told the court yesterday that “Two-Face” Piers Morgan had hacked into his bank account.
The former Daily Mirror editor has been accused of snooping into his private finances while posing as a friend and supporter.
The former veteran doctor to Tony Blair has been giving evidence to support Prince Harry’s piracy case against the Mirror Group.
He told the Supreme Court that he was shown invoices indicating that in 1999 Morgan paid a private investigator to “hunt my bank account and mortgage affairs.” He said the same person was used to expose the Peter Mandelson home loan scandal in 1998.
Campbell claimed that the Mirror was hoping to find “something newsworthy” in his bank accounts as well. The 65-year-old was a journalist for Mirror in the 1980s and 1990s, but said he had never witnessed a phone hack.
Alastair Campbell leaves the High Court with his partner Fiona Millar yesterday
He became Head of Press No. 10 when Sir Tony came to power in 1997, and yesterday he told the High Court that the Mandelson scandal had damaged the Labor government.
He claimed: ‘Mr Morgan’s two-faced behaviour, claiming to be a true ally of the Prime Minister and the Labor government, while all along, he and his large team have been using illegal means to find stories designed to destabilize that government, compounds the outrage I feel about this .
The Mirror has denied all allegations made by Prince Harry and three other claimants as part of a seven-week trial. Morgan has vehemently denied hacking. Campbell’s evidence in court was limited to the alleged bank hacking incident. He was not asked anything about the Duke of Sussex, who brought the case.
Campbell was a prominent figure in Sir Tony’s decade in power and was present at many of the Labor leader’s meetings with Harry’s mother, Princess Diana.
He has said how Diana once challenged him directly in his time as a journalist for the Mirror and asked “why did I write such harsh things about her when I was a newspaper columnist”.
“There have been some people whose fame has become so great that in the media we stop seeing them as human beings,” he admitted.
