Police request transcripts from Prince Harry’s case against the owner of the Sun | Prince Harry

The Met Police have requested transcripts of the pre-trial hearings in Prince Harry’s phone-hacking case against Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper empire, the Guardian can reveal, as fresh calls were made for a new criminal investigation.

The development will raise hopes among press intrusion campaigners for a potential new inquiry into allegations of “perjury and cover-ups” made against News Group Newspapers (NGN), the owner of the Sun.

The case between Harry and NGN was settled on Wednesday, just 14 minutes before the trial was due to start, with Murdoch’s newspaper company offering significant damages and an apology to Harry and Tom Watson, the former Labor deputy leader, who was a co-claimant.

NGN’s recording of “Incidents of Illegal Activities Conducted by Private Investigators Working for the Sun” was the first time the company acknowledged the illegality beyond the now-defunct News of the World.

NGN continues to deny that phone hacking took place at the Sun, its flagship newspaper, or that its journalists there were involved in criminal activity. The paper was edited by Rebekah Brooks, now chief executive of NGN, between 2003 and 2009.

On the steps of the Court on Wednesday, the plaintiffs’ barrister David Sherborne had further argued that the information made by NGN in the five years that the case had been running offered grounds for a fresh police investigation into “perjury and cover-ups”.

Lord Watson has said he intends to present a dossier of evidence to the Met Commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley.

The Guardian understands this file is being prepared by Watson’s lawyers, who intend to present the evidence within weeks.

Sources close to Harry and Watson said the evidence of wrongdoing by executives at NGN was “virtually incontrovertible”. The company vehemently denies this.

Meanwhile, the Guardian understands the MET has been monitoring the civil case and has made a formal application for transcripts of all the key hearings where the evidence was discussed. NGN declined to comment.

A spokesperson for Met said: “We are aware of the outcome of the civil trial. It remains the case that there are no active police investigations into allegations of phone hacking or related matters.

“We await any correspondence from the parties involved, which we will respond to in due course.”

Last year, former prime minister Gordon Brown added his voice to calls for a new police inquiry into allegations that Lewis, now chief executive of the Washington Post, presided over the deliberate destruction of emails at Murdoch’s British newspaper business when he worked for the company 14 years ago.

There had been revelations in the High Court about minutes of a 2011 meeting between the police and Lewis, who was the newspaper company’s general manager at the time.

Detectives had been investigating a complaint from Brown about the mass deletion of emails belonging to senior staff at Murdoch’s newspaper company as the police investigation into the illegality at the company continued.

Lewis justified the deletions of some emails by accusing Brown of “controlling” a plot with Watson, then a Labor MP, to obtain emails from Brooks through a third party.

As part of the settlement on Wednesday, NGN confirmed that it now accepted that “this information was false and Lord Watson did not receive any such confidential information. NGN fully and unequivocally apologizes for this. “

On Friday, actor Hugh Grant repeated his call for police to act, saying: “I think what they (NGN) are afraid of is that these conclusions would trigger a new criminal investigation.”

The Met Commissioner, speaking to LBC Radio, said the force would “reflect” but that a “massive series of inquiries” had been carried out.

Rowley added: “Much of the material in the civil trial actually came from these investigations and was requested through legal processes by the litigants. So let’s, let’s see if they produce anything. “

Chris Huhne, the former cabinet minister who settled a phone-hacking case with NGN in 2023, said he had also written to the Met Police to demand a further investigation. He said: “They swore under oath at Leveson that there was no criminal activity (at the Sun). So you know: Were they ignorant? Were they incompetent or are they lying? “

A spokesperson for NGN said: “It must also be emphasized that allegations made publicly pre-trial (and indeed post-settlement) that News International destroyed evidence in 2010-11 would have been subject to significant challenge at trial.

“These allegations were and continue to be strongly denied. Extensive evidence would have been called at trial to refute these claims by senior technology and legal staff. “