journalists commissioned the firm Southern Investigations for “confidential inquiries” in January 1999 “Re: Alastair John Campbell” and his partner Fiona Millar.
One of the documents, seized by police from Southern Investigations, appeared to include details of the couple’s bank accounts, including their outstanding mortgage balance and monthly payments. Mr Campbell said: “I find the fact that MGN unlawfully obtained such private and personal financial information about myself and Fiona extremely troubling especially because of my role in government at that time. The fact that they did not publish the information they obtained in no way minimises this view.”
He added: “Though our mortgage details were not published, it leaves us wondering what other stories about us may have been obtained illegally.”made headlines and forced the then-trade secretary’s resignation, the newspaper had decided “to fish into my bank and mortgage affairs in the hope that they too would reveal something they considered newsworthy.
He added: “Mr Morgan’s two-faced conduct, in purporting to be a real ally of the prime minister 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, compounds the anger I feel about this, as does the fact that this conduct has been emphatically denied, by Mr Morgan and his colleagues, for so long.