Grant claims on hacking phone ‘untrue’

Hugh Grant made false claims that the Mail on Sunday hacked his phone on the basis of “thin” evidence, a lawyer for the paper’s publishers said yesterday.

The Four Weddings and a Funeral star told the Leveson Inquiry in November that a “bizarre” article suggesting he had “late-night phone calls with a plummy-voiced studio executive” could only have come from listening to his voicemails.

But Liz Hartley, head of editoial legal services at Associated Newspapers, which publishes the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday and Metro, rejected the claim. She told the inquiry into press standards that the story came from a “trusted” source who spoke regularly to Grant’s then-girlfriend, Jemima Khan.

The inquiry also heard that the Mail on Sunday continued using a private detective for 18 months after he was raided in an investigation into the illegal trade of personal data and seven months after he was charged.

The Information Commissioner’s Office uncovered a “treasure trove” of evidence linking newspapers to the sale of private data when it searched the Hampshire home of Steve Whittamore in March 2003. He received a conditional discharge in April 2005 for illegally accessing data.