Rupert Murdoch, News Corp Founder. World Economic Forum/Flickr.com

In a major settlement, Rupert Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers has made ‘a full and unequivocal apology’ for the ‘serious intrusion by The Sun’ into the Duke of Sussex’s private life. News Group also admitted for the first time ‘incidents of unlawful activities carried out by private investigators working for The Sun’ between 1996 and 2011. The statement by News Group, which owns The Sun and the now defunct News of the World, concludes the phone-hacking case brought against the publisher by the Duke, also known as Prince Harry.

The Prince’s settlement was announced in January, hours after a courtroom battle between his legal team and News Group had been set to begin. In its statement, News Group apologised for ‘the phone hacking, surveillance and misuse of private information by journalists and private investigators instructed by them at the News of the World’. And it added: ‘Today, our apology to the Duke of Sussex includes an apology for incidents of unlawful activities carried out by private investigators working for The Sun, not by journalists, during the period 1996-2011.’

Had Prince Harry’s case gone to trial, it would have been the first time News Group had defended itself in court against allegations that its own journalists and senior executives were either involved in, or were aware of, unlawful newsgathering across the organisation. ‘Many of us think it’s a great shame that it didn’t go to trial to expose properly what went on at News Group, but clearly they had to think of the costs and the risks,’ says Gerald Shamash, a partner at Edwards Duthie Shamash and Member of the House of Lords. 

However, Harris, a former Member of Parliament who settled his own claim against News Group over alleged unlawful information gathering in 2022, is concerned that News Group and its executives won’t be held to account for their actions. ‘The rule of law requires that there must not be impunity for people who mislead public inquiries or destroy evidence during police investigations, and where this is alleged, it should be investigated, otherwise there will be impunity for those who do it when the press are not willing to call them out,’ he says.

Several days after the settlement was announced, it was reported that the Metropolitan Police had requested transcripts of the pre-trial hearings in Prince Harry’s phone-hacking case, raising hopes of fresh investigations into claims of a cover-up, including alleged perjury and destruction of evidence. These are allegations News Group strongly denies and which it has said ‘would have been the subject of significant challenge at trial.’

‘It’s fair to say that Harry has put a stake through this period of unlawful newsgathering and phone hacking,’ says Mark Stephens CBE, Co-Chair of the IBA Human Rights Institute. Although there will be some outstanding matters concluding later in 2025, Stephens says the statute of limitation – generally six years from the date of an alleged wrongdoing for a claim to be brought – makes the prospect of new cases emerging distinctly unlikely.

Watson says a dossier will go to the Metropolitan Police, though the Met says there is no active criminal investigation into alleged newspaper wrongdoing. While Hugh Grant has urged the police and Crown Prosecution Service to investigate, Stephens is mindful of the resources required. ’I don’t think there is the appetite either amongst the civil judiciary, the police or the Director of Public Prosecutions to spend further resources on investigating this,’ he says. ‘The reality is that the police have limited resources.’

The government has already ruled out reviving the ‘Leveson 2’ inquiry, which was due to examine the relationship between journalists and the police, with a cabinet minister saying action against the media would only be considered ‘if there was new evidence’.

The settlement has reignited the debate about effective press regulation in the UK. Currently, the sector is regulated by two bodies, Ipso and Impress. ‘This can no longer be dismissed as being the case of a few bad apples; self-regulation of the press has failed,’ read a statement about the settlement on the Impress website. ‘Effective and truly independent regulation is the only way to stop these unethical practises which have been commonplace across the industry.’