A ruling issued this morning has rejected the Daily Mail's application to throw out the claims of phone tapping and other illegal activities made on behalf of claimants Baroness Doreen Lawrence, Sir Elton John and David Furnish, Prince Harry, Sadie Frost, Simon Hughes and Elizabeth Hurley.

As well as phone hacking and listening to live phone calls, the Mail is accused of bugging some of the claimants' homes and stealing private medical information.

Hacked Off Board Director Hugh Grant commented,

This ruling is a significant blow to the Daily Mail and great news for anyone who wants the truth about allegations of illegal press practices to come out. The timing is awkward for the Government, which caved in to the Daily Mail's lobbying earlier this week on media policy and announced plans to undermine the Leveson system of regulation by repealing one of its vital components, "section 40".

The Daily Mail's argument, that the claimants should have disbelieved the newspaper's aggressive protestations of innocence and brought claims sooner, was absurd and doomed to fail.

When I reported my suspicions that the Daily Mail had carried out illegal activities to the Leveson Inquiry in 2012, the editor Paul Dacre attacked my sworn evidence as “mendacious smears”. I am pleased that a judge will now decide whether similar allegations made by Prince Harry, Baroness Lawrence, Sir Elton John and others are also mendacious smears or whether the mendacity lies with the other side.

The Government risks humiliation if it continues to outsource its media policy to the Daily Mail, a newspaper which now faces lengthy court battles over allegations of illegal spying - not just hacking phones but bugging cars and listening in to private conversations.

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