Overview
- Former Met deputy assistant commissioner David Wood questioned the reliability of informant Derek Haslam and said he did not recall the Mail titles being among private investigator Jonathan Rees’s newspaper clients.
- Wood told the court Haslam never reported that Southern Investigations was surveilling Baroness Doreen Lawrence, undercutting a central plank of the claimants’ case.
- Ex-Daily Mail crime editor Stephen Wright denied hacking, landline interception, blagging or paying police officers, saying the allegations left him completely devastated.
- Wright testified that Prince Harry’s contact with Baroness Lawrence in January 2022 “changed everything” in their relationship, after which she joined the group claim filed against Associated Newspapers later that year.
- Claimants allege unlawful information-gathering across articles from 1997–2007, while ANL calls the claims inference and preposterous; investigator Gavin Burrows, paid by Harry’s research team, has recanted prior testimony, and Wright clashed with opposing counsel over cash payments and PI use.