Stephen Wright interviewing member of notorious Latin Kings mob, who help Albanian gangs supply cocaine to Europe
Former Daily Mail crime editor Stephen Wright has said he was “devastated” by allegations that he deployed illegal newsgathering in the Stephen Lawrence case.
Wright played a key role in the Mail’s longstanding campaign to secure justice for Stephen after the Met Police bungled an investigation into his racist murder in 1993.
Stephen’s mother Baroness Doreen Lawrence has accused Mail journalists of cynically pretending to befriend her family in order to sell newspapers . Her privacy claim accuses the paper of hacking and tapping her phone lines, illegally accessing her bank records and using deception to “blag” information out of her. A more serious allegation of commissioning burglary to order was dropped before the privacy trial commenced.
Baroness Lawrence decided to sue the Mail after being presented with evidence by Prince Harry’s legal research team largely based on testimony from private detectives. She is part of the ongoing privacy trial against Mail publisher Associated Newspapers alongside co-defendants Prince Harry, Sir Elton John, David Furnish, Liz Hurley and Sir Simon Hughes.
One of those detectives, Gavin Burrows, was paid tens of thousands by Prince Harry’s research team and has now recanted all the testimony he gave to Prince Harry’s legal team .
In his witness statement, Wright said: “Fighting and exposing racism, police incompetence and the cause of the underdog has been a theme of my long career.”
Wright joined Mail as a reporter in 1993, became crime editor in 2006, associate news editor in 2010, associate editor (investigations) in 2021 and took redundancy in September 2025.
Wright said he has used search agencies to locate people he needed to speak to and has arranged payments for tips and interviews.
But he said: “I have never paid a serving police officer or known any police officer to be paid by the Daily Mail. To do so would be wholly unacceptable.”
‘Immensely hurtful’ to be put ‘on the side of the racist and corrupt’
On the claims made by Baroness Lawrence and her legal team, he said: “It is no exaggeration to say that when I first learned of Lady Lawrence’s allegations against me, I was completely devastated.
“To this day, I struggle to understand how she could be persuaded to take such a course of action.
“She was someone for whom I had the utmost respect. I had worked for 25 years on the campaign to achieve justice for her son Stephen, a campaign which had led to two racist murderers being jailed and was proud to think that she considered me a professional ally.
“I was deeply committed to her campaign and referred to her at my office as `Daily Mail royalty’.
“What shocked me so much was not only the nature of the allegations, but the way she described me in legal documents.
“The suggestion that I did not have true motives as a race campaigner was immensely hurtful, not only because of my career track record fighting racism, but also because of my personal circumstances (my wife, whom Lady Lawrence has met, is a woman of colour, as are our precious daughters).
“I worried that her casting me on the side of the racist and corrupt could whip up worse than a Twitter mob and, having worried intensely about my family over the past three years, felt that I had to improve security measures at our home.”
He added: “For the avoidance of doubt, I have never hacked or tapped Lady Lawrence’s telephone (or anyone else’s). I don’t believe that I have ever had her telephone number; if I wanted a quote or statement then I would go via her representative Imran Khan KC or to representatives of the Lawrence family campaign.
“I have never bugged, burgled or ‘blagged’ information about Lady Lawrence, her family members, or her legal representatives. I have never asked anyone else to do any of these things for me.
“I have never asked anyone to monitor Lady Lawrence’s phone bills, bank accounts or private communications and am not aware of anyone at the Daily Mail ever doing so.”
Former police informant said corrupt private eye spoke about working for Mail
The allegations against Wright appear to rest on evidence from former police informant Derek Haslam who testified that he gathered intelligence on corrupt private investigator Jonathan Rees between 1997 and 2006.
Haslam said: “I know that he [Rees] used his unlawful ‘research services’ – such as phone tapping, obtaining phone bills, accessing bank accounts, car registration details, corrupt payments to cops and other confidential data unlawfully gathered – as part of his operations against the Lawrence family. Rees used his ‘research services’ either when specifically commissioned by the Mail or his other newspaper clients, or in order to obtain fresh tips or leads to sell to them.”
Wright said in his witness statement: “I have never worked with Jonathan Rees or Southern Investigations or received information of any sort from them.
“In 2014, Rees featured in a damning Daily Mail series (instigated by me) exposing overlapping corruption in the Daniel Morgan and Stephen Lawrence case. His lawyer threatened to sue the Daily Mail for libel in frosty correspondence with me before publication when I introduced myself to him and gave his client a right of reply. I don’t otherwise think that I have had contact with Rees.”
It also been alleged that another private investigator/freelance journalist Christine Hart dishonestly blagged information from Doreen Lawrence in a telephone call.
Wright said: “I do remember Christine Hart as someone who occasionally rang me and offered stories. I don’t remember her ever offering me a story on Lady Lawrence… have never asked her to work with me to investigate or stand up any story.”
Lawyer David Sherborne’s ‘conspiracy theories’ described as ‘nonsense’
Cross-examining the journalist, lawyer David Sherborne said that Wright had been an “extensive user” of private investigator business Express Locate International and that the journalist was aware the business obtained call data and bank information.
“Incorrect,” Wright replied.
In his written evidence, the journalist said that he thought the business was a search agent he was allowed to use that took information from public records, and would not have thought they could check bank records.
Later asked if he had a “special relationship” with a senior detective involved in a reinvestigation into the Stephen Lawrence murder, Wright told the court: “Any relationship I would have had would have been entirely professional. I would not have called it special.”
Wright later called an allegation of paying a private investigator to “blag” information from Lady Lawrence “absolute nonsense”.
He continued: “You are flogging a dead horse here, like many other dead horses in this case.”
And asked by Sherborne whether he had obtained information from corrupt police officers, Wright said it was not true, adding: “You can ask me the questions, you can make your conspiracy theories 20 times… the answer will be the same. It’s nonsense.”
The trial before Mr Justice Nicklin is due to conclude in March, with a judgment in writing due at a later date.
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