Heather Mills feels ‘joy and vindication’ over phone-hacking settlement

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Media captionHeather Mills: “The feeling I have is one of joy and vindication”

Campaigner Heather Mills said she feels vindicated after settling her phone-hacking case against the News of the World for a “substantial” sum.

An apology from News Group Newspapers to her and her sister, Fiona Mills, was read out at a High Court hearing.

The publisher offered “sincere apologies” for “distress caused to them by the invasion of their privacy”.

The former model said her charity work suffered due to the “destruction” of her reputation.

Speaking outside court after the case, she said: “The feeling that I have is one of joy and vindication”.

She said her “motivation to win the decade-long fight stemmed from a desire to obtain justice”.

Ms Mills, who had been married to Sir Paul McCartney, said the phone hacking had “an extremely detrimental impact on my personal life and that of my family”.

She said it had also adversely affected her landmine and animal charities and their “ability to raise funds”.

The Mills’ claims were settled on the basis that NGN made no admission of liability in relation to their allegations of voicemail interception or other unlawful information gathering at The Sun.

In her statement, Ms Mills spoke of the “highest media libel settlement in British legal history”.

However, her case was a privacy, rather than a libel, claim and it is not known if Ms Mills was referring to the amount of all those who have settled privacy claims against NGN over phone hacking so far.

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