‘Obvious’ Burrell was lying, says coroner

It was "blindingly obvious" that Paul Burrell, former butler to Diana, Princess of Wales, was lying when he gave evidence at the inquest into the deaths of the princess and her friend Dodi Fayed, the coroner said on Tuesday. Beginning his second day of summing up, following six months of hearing evidence, Lord Justice Scott Baker told the jury: "You have heard him in the witness box and, even without what he said subsequently in the hotel room in New York, it was blindingly obvious that the evidence that he gave in this court was not the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth."

The judge also suggested that Burrell - who once described himself as Diana's 'rock' - may have given his evidence in January while thinking that "whatever he said might have an impact on his future enterprises".

The judge's remarks follow his comments on Monday that it was "regrettable" that several witnesses - including Burrell and Mohamed Fayed's former head of security John Macnamara - had been "liars by their own admission". He also told the jury, as reported here this week, that there was no evidence that Prince Philip, the Secret Intelligence Service or any other government agency had anything to do with Diana and Dodi's deaths in the 1997 Paris car crash. Mohamed Fayed's theories about the crash were "so demonstrably without foundation" that even his lawyer was no longer pursuing them.

More than 250 witnesses have given evidence at the High Court. A late attempt by Fayed to force the coroner to summon Prince Philip to testify, and for written questions to be put to the Queen, was summarily rejected by a higher court.