Key whistleblower contradicts part of phone hacking case against Daily Mail | Media

A key whistleblower who backed Prince Harry and Doreen Lawrence’s legal claim against the Daily Mail publisher appears to have dealt a last-minute blow to the case against the media group.

Just weeks before the high court hearing, private investigator Jonathan Rees, who backed allegations of illegal news gathering at Associated Newspapers, contradicted the central allegation in the plaintiffs’ case.

Speaking to C4’s Dispatches, Rees denied admitting to Lawrence that he was involved in harassing her following the racially motivated murder of his 18-year-old son Stephen in 1993.

In his witness statement prepared before the hearing, Lawrence claimed that he admitted that private detectives tapped his landlines, hacked his voicemails and installed a listening device in a cafe where he had a meeting.

Her statement said Rees, who had previously been found guilty of perverting the course of justice, had confirmed to her that he had secretly done work for the Daily Mail aimed at stealing information about her.

Speaking to C4’s Cathy Newman, Rees said that was not the case. “Other agents had offered me help with this surveillance,” he said. “But I wasn’t involved.”

When Newman objected that Lawrence’s witness statement was “based on your confirmation that you carried out the bugging operation for the Mail”, Rees replied: “That’s right, they’ll have to rethink that and the legal team will have to rethink that too.”

Asked if her comments amounted to “poking a hole” in the case against Associated Newspapers, Rees replied: “Not because they actually were. All I can say in support of that woman is that yes I heard about it, yes I was invited to be part of the team, yes I saw it, I saw it, the actual transcripts, I know this was going on, I know the surveillance teams were used against her and her family. But I can’t provide any documentary evidence for that.”

Associated Newspapers Ltd (ANL) is accused by seven claimants, including Sir Elton John and his husband David Furnish; Elizabeth Hurley; Sadie Frost and Sir Simon Hughes were sued for carrying out or procuring illegal activities such as hiring private detectives to plant listening devices in cars, “spoofing” private records and accessing private phone conversations.

ANL denies the allegations and defends legal action. ANL said the allegations of illegal information gathering regarding Lawrence were “appalling and completely unfounded smears”.

Last month, a second private investigator at the center of the Duke of Sussex and others’ lawsuit against the Daily Mail publisher claimed the signature on an earlier witness statement was a “forgery”.

Gavin Burrows, who has been linked to the most serious allegations of illegal information, has retracted his alleged confession, saying it was “completely false”.

Burrows allegedly claimed in a 2021 witness statement that he and his team obtained information by hacking voicemails, tapping landline phones and bugging cars. He also allegedly said he worked for the Mail on Sunday.

Five of the claimants told the high court they were taking legal action against ANL based on evidence apparently obtained by Burrows.

Burrows had previously retracted his alleged statement in 2023. In a new 30-page witness statement given on September 25, 2025 and announced by the high court last month, he reiterated his denial, saying he had never engaged in any illegal activity on behalf of ANL.

The Dispatches program, which aired on Thursday, also provided new details about the finances of those who helped Harry and Lawrence file a lawsuit against Associated Newspapers.

According to the scheme, the father of James Stunt, who has long been the target of Daily Mail investigations, was providing money to former News of the World journalist Graham Johnson, who was assisting as an investigator. James Stunt is Petra Ecclestone’s ex-husband.

Geoff Stunt told the Dispatches that “any suggestion that he funded investigations into illegal activity at the Daily Mail as some form of ‘revenge’ is false and misunderstood.”

He told the program that he had “funded the investigation into whether he and his family members had been exposed to ANL’s illegal information-gathering activities” but that he had “never funded the investigation into illegal activities at the Daily Mail for the purposes of the present allegations”.

Actor Hugh Grant also told the program that the newspaper was funding Johnson’s investigation into rumors that he offered money to Soham killer Ian Huntley.

He said: “In 2015 Graham Johnson asked me to help fund investigations into reports that Daily Mail journalists had offered to pay Ian Huntley, who was later found guilty of murdering two teenage girls in Soham.

“If the investigation had established the veracity of these reports, this would have been a matter for the police and not the civil courts… I have never used the services of Graham Johnson, directly or indirectly, to gather evidence for any case.”