Prince Harry has won the first stage of his libel claim against the publisher of The Mail on Sunday after a High Court judge ruled an article about the duke’s legal claim against the Home Office was defamatory.

Why is Prince Harry suing Mail on Sunday?

Harry is suing Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL) after the paper ran a story following the first hearing in the duke’s separate High Court claim over his security arrangements when he is in the UK.

The piece was published in February under the headline: “Exclusive: How Prince Harry tried to keep his legal fight with the government over police bodyguards a secret… then – just minutes after the story broke – his PR machine tried to put a positive spin on the dispute.”

Lawyers for Harry argued the article was defamatory and meant that Harry had “lied”, had “improperly and cynically” tried to manipulate public opinion and had “tried to keep his legal fight with the Government secret from the public.”

Justin Rushbrooke QC, for Harry, said: “Allegations that a person has lied to the public, manipulated the public and attempted to keep secret which ought properly to be public are serious ones which tend to lower him in the eyes of right-thinking people.”

However, ANL’s lawyers argued the article was not defamatory, with Andrew Caldecott QC arguing: “The article does allege that the claimant’s PR team spun the story, or added a gloss unduly favourable to the claimant, which led to inaccurate reporting and confusion about the nature of the claim.

“It does not allege dishonesty against them.”

In a ruling on Friday, the judge found that parts of the article in the claim were defamatory.

Discussing one of the meanings of the article, Mr Justice Nicklin said a reader would think Harry “was responsible for public statements, issued on his behalf, which claimed that he was willing to pay for police protection in the UK, and that his legal challenge was to the Government’s refusal to permit him to do so, whereas the true position, as revealed in documents filed in the legal proceedings, was that he had only made the offer to pay after the proceedings had commenced”.

He also said the article would have been read as alleging Harry “was responsible for trying to mislead and confuse the public as to the true position, which was ironic given that he now held a public role in tackling ‘misinformation’”.

Mr Justice Nicklin added: “It may be possible to ‘spin’ facts in a way that does not mislead, but the allegation being made in the article was very much that the object was to mislead the public.

“That supplies the necessary element to make the meanings defamatory at common law.”