Hacked Off shouldn’t be allowed to scupper Paul Dacre’s peerage

It sounded like an exciting game of Consequences. The Duke of Sussex, Lady Lawrence (mother of Stephen), Sir Elton John, Liz Hurley and Sadie Frost said they will take the Daily Mail to court for alleged phone hacking. The leading lawyers in this case, Hamlins, put out a press release accusing Associated Newspapers, the Mail’s publishers, of grave crimes and wrongs, but no legal papers have been filed. 

This is rather unusual. Why the rush over these historical claims? The answer lies in another press release, issued by Hacked Off, the group backed by the late Max Mosley. It announced the same news and added that ‘If phone hacking did occur at Mail titles, and Paul Dacre [the Mail editor in chief] is found to have been aware of it, he would have knowingly misled the Leveson Inquiry under oath. Any plans to give him a seat in the House of Lords should be suspended until the conclusion of these claims and any subsequent investigations.’ 

Since any legal action would take several years, compliance with Hacked Off’s ‘ifs’ would end Dacre’s prospect of ermine, held out by Boris Johnson’s imminent resignation honours. I do not know, of course, whether the accusations are true, but I don’t think it is a brilliant idea that legal threats made by rich people (Lady Lawrence being the only non-rich person in the group) should automatically kibosh public appointments or honours. It makes me wonder whether these accusations are serious, or just examples of the depressing 21st-century passion for ‘lawfare’. As country neighbours of the legendary Mail hard man, where many villeins owe their livelihoods to Dacre’s acres, we are waiting to wassail madly when he is justly rewarded by a peerage. We scorn envious attempts to pull him down.

This extract from Charles Moore’s Notes appears in this week’s issue of The Spectator, out tomorrow