Leveson inquiry sees editor reject call to withdraw claim actor lied as Max Clifford says phone hacking a 'cancer' by a minority
The editor of the Daily Mail, Paul Dacre, refused to retract his accusations that the actor Hugh Grant had lied, during sometimes angry exchanges at the Leveson inquiry on Thursday.
Asked to apologise and withdraw his claim that Grant had made a "mendacious smear" against the Mail group, he said he would only do so if Grant withdrew his own statements attacking his papers.
He claimed: "Hugh Grant was obsessed by trying to drag the Daily Mail into another newspaper's scandal."
The veteran editor, asked to answer allegations that an article about Grant's love life might have been obtained by phone hacking, made plain his resentment that he was being subjected to further cross-examination. He repeatedly interrupted David Sherborne, counsel for Grant and other hacking victims, and talked across him.
Dacre described questions as irrelevant and at one point said loudly: "I'm not going to answer any more questions on that particular point." He had not studied one witness statement immediately before testifying, he said, because he had been busy "trying to edit my paper".
Despite the jousting, the editor-in-chief of Associated Newspapers shed no more light on the question of how one of his papers, the Mail on Sunday, came to publish a an article in 2007 containing allegations of a non-existent affair involving telephone messages between Grant and a "plummy-voiced woman".
Dacre accused Grant of bad faith, asserting he had subsequently produced evidence "out of a hat" suggesting the story must have been based on a misunderstanding of "flirtatious" late-night phone messages left by a film industry contact. Dacre said: "Hey presto! He conveniently remembers it!"
Dacre said he had been assured the tabloid's story had been obtained by legitimate methods. The paper's editor had told him that a reporter had explained that the story had come from a freelance, Sharon Feinstein, who in turn claimed to have got it "from a source in the Grant camp".
Lord Justice Leveson, who said he was determined to allow Grant's counsel to have a fair chance to put points to Dacre, told the editor that he would not make a finding of fact about what actually happened over the "plummy-voiced woman". His only concern was that Dacre had called Grant's testimony on oath "a mendacious smear". "He's deliberately lying! That's what it means!"
Dacre claimed that the opening testimony in the Leveson inquiry had made it "an extraordinary day … a unique occasion". Grant was the "poster boy for the Hacked Off campaign" who had deliberately brought out his allegations. "He knew the damage it would cause."
Dacre had heard of Grant's testimony on the 4pm radio news while he was in a car and became angry because Grant had been previously put on notice by the Mail group's legal department that his repeated allegations of their involvement in phone hacking were not true.
"We felt we had to respond even more robustly," he said. "We needed to fight fire with fire." He told Leveson: "I don't think you understand the speed of 24-hour instant news."