Prince Harry has said the Royal Family witheld information from him about phone hacking because they didn’t want him to bring a claim as it would “open a can of worms”.

In a witness statement submitted before his civil claim against Daily Mail publisher Associated Newspapers, the Duke of Sussex said that he was conditioned to accept his family’s rule to “never complain, never explain” when dealing with the press.

But discussing phone hacking claims against News Group Newspapers, Harry said “I became aware that I had a claim that I could bring” in 2018.

“The Institution was without a doubt withholding information from me for a long time about NGN’s phone hacking and that has only become clear in recent years as I have pursued my own claim with different legal advice and representation,” he said.

Speaking about how he found out other people within or associated with the Royal Family had brought phone hacking claims against the press, he says: “It is not an exaggeration to say that the bubble burst in terms of what I knew in 2020 when I moved out of the United Kingdom.”

He went on: “There was never any centralised discussion between us about who had brought claims as each office in the Institution is siloed. There is this misconception that we are all in constant communication with one another but that is not true.”