The News of the World on Tuesday issued a detailed formal apology for phone hacking for the first time, to actor Sienna Miller.
A lawyer for News Group Newspapers, the News International subsidiary that publishes the News of the World, read a statement in the high court expressing regret for intercepting voicemail messages intended for Miller.
NGN's QC, Michael Silverleaf, said his client offered its "sincere apologies" to Miller for "the distress caused to her by accessing of her voicemail messages, the publication of the private information in the articles and the related harassment she suffered as a consequence".
Silverleaf added that NGN "acknowledges that the information should never have been obtained in the manner it was, the private information should never have been published and that the first defendant [NGN] has accepted responsibility for misuse of private information, breach of confidence and harassment".
Miller, who was not present to hear the statement, accepted an out-of court-payment of £100,000 in damages last month plus her legal costs. Her solicitor Mark Thomson, a partner at Atkins Thomson, said she would not be making a statement.
David Sherborne QC, for Miller, reminded the high court that she had changed her mobile phone number three times in as many months in a bid to avoid being successfully targeted by the News of the World and Glenn Mulcaire, a private detective who formerly worked for the paper.
Sherborne added that the News of the World had published "numerous articles" in 2005 and 2006 that used private information.
By admitting to this, the paper has conceded that it used information obtained by intercepting messages about Miller's former partner Jude Law and ex-boyfriend Daniel Craig, as the basis for stories.
In her statement of claim, the actor cited 11 articles that drew on private information, including details of her relationship with Law and with Craig, and Miller's discussions with the former about the possibility of them having children. Miller is the first celebrity to settle a claim since the tabloid, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, in April admitted hacking the phones of several public figures and offered to pay compensation.
NGN has also said it will tell Miller privately about the full extent of the phone-hacking scheme.
Sherborne said: "The claimant did not know whether someone close to her was leaking information or whether her mobile telephone was somehow being hacked into. Both possibilities were extremely distressing."
Notes found in Mulcaire's notebook, which was seized in a police raid in 2006, included three of Miller's mobile numbers and their related account numbers, pin numbers, the numbers she dialled to access her voicemail services and the passwords she used to discuss her accounts with her mobile phone provider.
He had also made a note of the fact that the first two numbers were "dead" by 22 November 2005. He had obtained and written down the address and home telephone number of Miller's mother and similar mobile phone data relating to Law's account and that of Ciara Parkes, Miller's publicist and friend.
Mulcaire also had details of who had left messages on her mobile, the time they had done so and the caller's telephone number.
He had written the name "Ian" in the top left hand corner of some of the pages in his notebooks which contained that information.
Miller claimed that was a reference to Ian Edmondson, the former assistant editor (news) at the News of the World, who was suspended in January and subsequently sacked. He was arrested and questioned by police in April.
