Lawyer for Mail publisher tells court she did not lie to Leveson Inquiry

A senior lawyer for the publisher of the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday has denied lying in 2011 when she told the Leveson Inquiry that the company had seen "no evidence" a private investigator carried out unlawful work for the papers.

Liz Hartley told the High Court that investigations had been ongoing when she made the statement to the public inquiry into press standards.

She was giving evidence in the trial brought by seven high-profile individuals, including the Duke of Sussex and Sir Elton John, who are suing the publisher for alleged "grave breaches of privacy".

In court on Thursday, Hartley said the allegation she had lied under oath had dragged her reputation "through the mud".

Publisher Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL) denies all allegations of unlawful information gathering and says the claimants are "clutching at straws".

Hartley, who is the current legal director of ANL's holding company DMG Media Ltd, accepted it had been "slightly bold" to claim there was no apparent evidence of wrongdoing, because it was based on what she knew at the time.

In her witness statement she said: "I was not satisfied on the basis of the evidence I had seen that Associated journalists had commissioned unlawful searches for information."

She was questioned for nearly five hours by David Sherborne for the claimants, who have said ANL's denial of wrongdoing at the Leveson Inquiry was one of the reasons they did not sue earlier.

Sherborne put it to Hartley that she had seen evidence in 2011 which suggested Mail journalists had asked private investigator Steve Whittamore for information, and that he had been paid for using unlawful methods to provide it.

Whittamore specialised in getting unlisted ex-directory phone numbers for people journalists were writing about, as well as their "friends and family" phone number lists.

A criminal inquiry into his activities by the Information Commissioner's Office in 2002 seized Whittamore's notebooks, which showed the Mail newspapers had spent more money on his services than any other titles.

Whittamore admitted breaches of the Data Protection Act in 2005.

In August 2011, Hartley led an internal investigation looking at records of payments to private investigators ahead of the Leveson Inquiry that year.

It had examined evidence gathered by the Information Commissioner which included spreadsheets detailing hundreds of payments to Whittamore authorised by editors at the Mail and Mail on Sunday.

A series of invoices and payment records were shown to the court suggesting payments had been made by ANL to Whittamore.

In her witness statement to the inquiry in October 2011, Hartley said they had seen "no evidence" Whittamore obtained information illegally for its journalists.

Sherborne repeatedly put it to Hartley that in fact, the documents were "important evidence about your journalists asking for Whittamore to carry out such searches". Since the newspapers had been sent invoices by Whittamore, it was evidence the newspapers had in their own archives.

She responded that, at the time, ANL was continuing to investigate and was under time pressure. She said going through boxes of receipts was impossible because they had not been categorised.

Hartley said the internal inquiry was mainly relying on the spreadsheets of payments to Whittamore - which might have been inaccurate - not the notes of the private investigator himself.

The trial is due to last another six-and-a-half weeks.