‘Two-faced’ Morgan tried to rattle Labour, says Campbell

ALASTAIR CAMPBELL has accused Piers Morgan, the Daily Mirror’s former editor, of being “two-faced” as he claimed his mortgage details were illegally obtained in an attempt to destabilise the government.

Tony Blair’s former spin doctor told the High Court he was a victim of unlawful information gathering by Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) when journalists targeted “private and personal financial information” about himself and Fiona Millar, his partner. He said Morgan purported to be a “real ally” of Mr Blair and the Labour government while “all the time he and his senior team were using illegal means to find stories designed to destabilise that government”.

“Mr Morgan’s two-faced conduct… compounds the anger I feel about this,” he added.

Mr Campbell was called to the witness stand yesterday to testify in support of Prince Harry and other claimants in their case of alleged unlawful information gathering against the publishers of the Mirror. He claimed it was “extremely troubling” that MGN journalists unlawfully obtained information about himself and Ms Millar, especially due to his “role in government at the time”.

Mr Campbell, who worked as chief press secretary in Downing Street from 1997 to 2000, said he was “disgusted” at the methods used by MGN to obtain his mortgage details.

He said that they were obtained by Southern Investigations, a private detective agency, as suggested in two invoices from the company addressed to the Mirror’s Gary Jones. One invoice was titled “A J Campbell and Fiona Miller [sic]” and was a £150 payment “for undertaking confidential enquiries and reporting our findings in detail”. The second had the same reference and date and was for £275.

The third document, which was confidential, contained information about Mr Campbell and Ms Millar’s mortgage payments, including the exact amount of the monthly payments coming out of the couple’s bank accounts.

He said the document had been seized by the police in a raid on Southern Investigations in 1999 and that it was disclosed by a “confidential source” of journalist Graham Johnson.

Mr Campbell, who was political and assistant editor at the Mirror in the early 1990s, said in his statement: “Fiona and I are shocked, and frankly, appalled at this intrusion into our privacy by the Daily Mirror.

“I find it very hard to believe that any editor, especially one as hands-on as Mr Morgan, would not have known and demanded to know where the big stories were coming from.”

The case continues.