Former Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre to be witness in trial brought by Prince Harry and others | Media

The former editor of the Daily Mail, Paul Dacre, is to be called as a witness in the legal action brought by the Duke of Sussex and six other household names against the newspaper’s publishers over allegations of unlawful information gathering, the high court was told.

Antony White KC, for Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL), said Dacre, 77, now the editor-in-chief of ANL’s DMG Media company, and Peter Wright, a former editor of the Mail on Sunday, could be called as early defence witnesses in the trial, scheduled to begin on 19 January.

It was “critically important for various reasons that Mr Dacre and Mr Wright are able to go out over the top first” to deal with “critically important” allegations “before they send their troops into battle”, White told the judge, Mr Justice Nicklin, at a pre-trial hearing.

David Sherborne, for the claimants, indicated that ANL wanted to call Dacre first in relation to “evidence he gave to the inquiry”, referring to the 2011-12 Leveson inquiry into press standards.

The publisher is being sued by Prince Harry, Sir Elton John, David Furnish, Liz Hurley, Sadie Frost, the campaigner Doreen Lawrence and the former politician Sir Simon Hughes.

The claimants allege ANL carried out or commissioned unlawful activities such as hiring private investigators to place listening devices inside cars, “blagging” private records and accessing private phone conversations. ANL vehemently denies the allegations.

The judge warned lawyers for the claimants he will not permit the case “to descend into a wide-ranging public inquiry” that was “guided only by what the claimants seek to shine a light on”. Nor would he allow “a series of rabbits produced out of a hat” to ambush witnesses.

His warning came as he granted the claimants’ legal team permission for restricted use of records kept by the private investigator Stephen Whittamore detailing his dealings with journalists. ANL had retained the two notebooks after they were produced at the Leveson inquiry, Sherborne told the judge.

The fact the claimants were not able to use the books was “wholly unjust” and a “totally unlevel playing field”, Sherborne had argued.

The court has previously heard private investigator Gavin Burrows had withdrawn a statement he allegedly made for the claimants in which he is said to have claimed to have targeted “hundreds, possibly thousands of people” through voicemail hacking, landline tapping and the accessing of financial and medical information for a journalist at the Mail on Sunday.

Burrows has claimed his signature on the statement was a “forgery”, an accusation dismissed by Sherborne as “scurrilous” and “a grotesque inclusion which is meant to be an attack on parts of the legal team”.

The trial, in which legal costs are estimated to reach £38m, is expected to last nine weeks.