By Nathan Sparkes

Baroness Lawrence describes profound sense of betrayal, as she alleges the Daily Mail illegally spied on her in hacking case against publisher

Over the course of the second and third weeks of the Mail trial the court heard devastating evidence from Baroness Lawrence and Sir Simon Hughes.

“I hope that I find truth for Stephen and that The Mail never victimise or profit from someone’s grief and loss again.”

Witness statement of Baroness Lawrence

Doreen Lawrence is best known for her extraordinary work campaigning for social justice following the racist murder of her son, Stephen, and the prejudices of the police which hampered the pursuit of justice for his killers.

As she says in her statement,

“I have been fighting all my life for truth and justice and to get people, institutions and those in power who think they are untouchable to do the right thing and to tell the truth.”

She now sits as Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon in the House of Lords, as a Labour peer.

At the time of Stephen’s murder the Daily Mail appeared to be supportive of Baroness Lawrence, criticising the police and publishing a frontpage story featuring the suspects.

Now, she believes that the newspaper was illegally spying on her along, and exploiting her grief and her son’s murder for stories.

Appalled by the Mail’s argument that she should have brought her case sooner and her claim should be rejected as it is too late, she asks,

“How could I have known that The Mail were landline tapping me, blagging me, and hacking into my voicemails, monitoring my bank account and phone bills, targeting me with hidden electronic surveillance, and making corrupt payments to serving police officers to steal information about the murder investigations into Stephen’s death whilst pretending to be my friend? How could anybody know, when they were being played for a fool?”

On several occasions, she reiterates her sense of “anger” and “betrayal” over the Mail’s alleged conduct.  “I am a victim all over again, but by people who I thought were my allies and friends”, she adds.

She goes on to accuse the Mail of being “in bed with the corruption that made sure Stephen’s killers were not found and put in jail.”

A theme of several of the claimants is a sense of feeling unsafe, as a result of alleged intrusion in their own homes.

Baroness Lawrence also felt this, alleging,

“To discover that The Mail set private investigators and corrupt police officers on me to look into my phone calls and communications when I thought I was safe in my home, but that I was not safe and that the people who I thought were friends were in fact enemies, and that they were embedded with the police corruption that has caused so much harm and grief to me, has violated me and made me feel like a victim all over again.”

Finally, as with many cases of press intrusion into grief, Baroness Lawrence feels exploited by the Mail.

She says, in her statement,

“This case and the invasions into my privacy and the stealing of information from a grieving mother and the investigation into her murdered son has been another trauma to me… I hope that I find truth for Stephen and that The Mail never victimise or profit from someone’s grief and loss again. This is what I hope to achieve after the years of fighting in court that The Mail have put me through and an apology for what they have done to me.”

The other claimants to give evidence over the last two weeks included politician Sir Simon Hughes.

“It is distressing to realise… that, like other newspapers, [The Daily Mail’s publisher] targeted me as well as others using unlawful means and the use of private investigators for the purposes of their own profit.”

- Witness statement of Sir Simon Hughes

Sir Simon was a senior Liberal Democrat MP for many years, and occupied ministerial office during the Coalition Government.

In 2006, in a pivotal leadership election for the Liberal Democrats, Sir Simon was an early favourite.  He was already a senior and widely recognised MP, and was broadly associated with the same part of the party which had been represented by the popular outgoing leader, the late Charles Kennedy.

That was until The Sun revealed that Sir Simon had previously had relationships with both men and women.  Waves of homophobic coverage followed in several newspapers, which took a toll on Sir Simon’s campaign, and he ultimately finished third.  Sir Simon attributes this intrusion – which raised no ethical concerns and had no public interest justification – to his defeat.  Given the party’s role in forming the next government, in 2010, Sir Simon reasonably suggests that this coverage might have had a lasting impact on the course of political affairs in the UK throughout the 2000s and 2010s.

Sir Simon’s claim now alleges that the Mail’s publishers – the Mail on Sunday, in particular – illegally spied on him at this time, and were among the newspapers (also The Sun and The News of the World) who accessed unlawful information about him which contributed to the damaging, intrusive and prejudiced coverage he endured.

For many years he believed, he says, in the Mail’s “very strong denials” of engagement in illegal behaviour.

He alleges,

“I found shocking the possibility that the targeting of me was part of wider behaviour by Associated in targeting individuals unlawfully. This was even more unacceptable in the light of the aggressive denials by all those connected with Associated who gave evidence to the Leveson Inquiry, and which I believed.”

He adds, on their failure to apologise for the alleged illegality,

“The fact that they have remained completely unapologetic for this illegal behaviour is also distressing.”

The Daily Mail’s publisher, Associated Newspapers, denies all wrongdoing.