Lawyer representing phone-hacking victims says ‘NOTW publishers spied on her’

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London, Dec 7: A lawyer who represents phone-hacking victims has claimed that she and her colleagues were spied on by publishers of the now defunct British tabloid News of the World in an attempt to stop her from working on the cases.

Charlotte Harris told the Leveson Inquiry that she had seen documents that revealed that she was put under surveillance by the News Group Newspapers, adding that the company had also made enquiries about information concerning her young children.

Harris, who represents alleged hacking victims, including Ulrika Jonsson, the former Liberal Democrat MP Mark Oaten and the sports agent Sky Andrew, said she first learned of the surveillance in May, The Independent reports.

“The motive was to attempt to discredit those solicitors who were conducting the phone-hacking cases. The reports were prepared in order to find a way of stopping us acting in these cases,” she said in a statement.

Harris told the inquiry that NGN had asked a private investigator about the price of obtaining details about her children, aged two and four at the time.

She said it was natural as a mother to feel “terribly uncomfortable” about the idea of people investigating her children. (ANI)