Ex-Daily Mail editor only has ‘vague memory’ of box containing £3m invoices to private investigators, court told

The former editor of the Daily Mail has said he has only a “vague memory” of a box containing invoices worth £3m to private investigators being discovered in the newspaper’s offices.

Paul Dacre, 77, told the High Court he “really didn’t know” the details behind the documents, which were uncovered by a paralegal in the managing editor’s office in October last year.

Asked about the ledgers found by lawyers, he said: “I know there has been a most enormous search by Baker McKenzie for every document in this case. I do have a vague memory of a box being found late in the day.”

Seven high-profile figures, including Prince Harry, Sir Elton John and actress Elizabeth Hurley, are bringing legal action against Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL), claiming that the publisher unlawfully obtained medical information, tapped landlines and hacked their phones.

ANL has strongly denied the allegations and any wrongdoing, and argued that the claimants had brought the case too late.

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In a written statement to the court, Mr Dacre said: “The grave and sometimes preposterous allegations made in these proceedings have astonished, appalled and – in the small hours of the night – reduced me to rage.”

He said allegations of phone hacking made by Baroness Doreen Lawrence have been “especially bewildering and bitterly wounding to me personally”, after the newspaper’s 15-year campaign for her son Stephen Lawrence, who was murdered in a racist attack in 1993.

On the front page of the paper’s 14 February 1997 edition, the paper labelled five men – Gary Dobson, Neil Acourt, Jamie Acourt, Luke Knight, and David Norris – as “murderers” and challenged them to sue the newspaper for libel.

Taking to the witness stand last week, Baroness Lawrence claimed that the Daily Mail was “pretending” to support her in getting justice, but just wanted the “credibility of supporting a black family”.

Her claims relate to five articles published between 1997 and 2007, with her lawyers claiming she was “extensively targeted” by private investigators working on behalf of ANL.

At the start of his evidence on Tuesday, Mr Dacre told the court: “My heart bleeds for Baroness Doreen Lawrence.”

In his written evidence, he said that it was “inconceivable” that anyone at the Daily Mail would have carried out the alleged activities.

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“Throughout my 26-year editorship, this, of all my countless campaigns, many of which made a significant contribution to the public weal, is the campaign of which I am most proud and to which I devoted the most space.”

He also said it “simply defies reason” for the Daily Mail to use illegal methods to see if other newspapers were getting involved in the Lawrence campaign, later adding: “The suggestion that we ran the campaign to generate exclusive headlines, sell newspapers and profit is sickeningly misplaced and bleakly cynical.”

Mr Dacre later said the claims had had a “deeply upsetting” and sometimes “traumatic” impact on staff at the paper, adding: “I have witnessed the anguish of honest, dedicated journalists who, for three years now, have had an insidious dark shadow hanging over their lives.”

The former editor, who is now editor-in-chief of ANL’s holding company DMG Media, said journalists across Fleet Street had a “hazy understanding” of data protection during this period, and inquiry agents had been used by other papers, including the BBC.

He said: “Indeed, it was the fact that others were using these agencies that, I believe, gulled us into believing that the services they provided must be above board. If I had thought something illicit or illegal was going on, then I would have been forthright in stopping it from happening.”

Mr Dacre added that a second Information Commissioner’s Office report on privacy was a “huge wake-up call” and that he previously had not been aware of the extent his journalists had been using search agencies.

As a result, Daily Mail journalists were “blitzed” with warnings, memos and letters to comply with data protection laws, and, in April 2007, banned the use of inquiry agents altogether.

David Sherborne, representing a group of the complainants, previously told the London court that the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday had been engaged in unlawful information gathering over “at least two decades”, and “knew they had skeletons in their closet”.

He said: “There is evidence, indisputable evidence, in the documents that Associated journalists and senior executives were commissioning and approving the acquisition and use of unlawfully obtained information, and they must have known that.

“That is why we say this was no clean ship, far from it.”

The trial before Mr Justice Nicklin is due to conclude in March, with a judgment in writing due at a later date.