The Daily Mirror can keep a cash windfall from covertly obtained pictures of the royal palaces, but must pay £25,000 towards the Queen's legal costs in a settlement yesterday of her landmark court action over revelations obtained by a reporter who posed as a royal footman.
Piers Morgan, the editor, agreed not to print anything further obtained during Ryan Parry's investigation, but said the settlement represented a "very good day at the office".
The Queen was granted a temporary injunction against the Mirror on Thursday, and this was made permanent by an agreement between the two sides over the weekend and announced at the high court in London yesterday.
The Queen dropped her claim for breach of confidence in return for a £25,000 contribution to her legal costs and an undertaking from the Mirror not to publish any more about Parry's two-month period as a footman.
The Mirror will keep the worldwide syndication fees for Parry's story to date, believed to run into six figures, and can reprint what it has already published, except for two pictures of the bedrooms of Prince Edward and Prince Andrew. But the paper must surrender all unpublished photographs and documents, destroy any draft unpublished stories, and not further syndicate any material already published.
Jonathan Sumption QC, for the Queen, told Mr Justice Lightman: "Although this particular incident can now be treated as closed, the Queen and the royal family are entitled to a proper measure of privacy in their personal lives.
"They are also entitled to trust those who serve in their households, without having to make the corrosive assumption that their confidence may be betrayed at any moment with impunity."
While he acknowledged there was a public interest in exposing security failings at the palace, Mr Sumption said the Mirror articles had gone too far with prurient detail. They told how the Queen's cornflakes were laid out in Tupperware boxes on her breakfast table, how her toast was spread lightly with marmalade, and how she fed scones to her corgis.
Mr Sumption warned others that the Queen would return to court if her privacy were breached again. "The small minority of people who are not willing to respect even these principles of ordinary human courtesy must expect that recourse will be had to the courts whenever it is appropriate," he told the court.
Richard Spearman QC, for the Mirror, said it had agreed to a permanent injunction to avoid "a long-drawn-out court battle with Her Majesty". He defended the actions of Parry, who concealed his identity as a journalist, saying the public had a right to know about "shortcomings in security" at Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle - "it took a classic piece of investigative journalism to reveal that".
Mr Morgan said after the hearing that the paper's investigation was justified because it had exposed lapses in security: Parry had submitted a bogus reference on his application form, and the scandal had led to a review of royal security.
He said it was a "major victory" for the Mirror to be allowed to keep its syndication fees, and suggested the palace had only sought the injunction because it feared further embarrassment. "We'd done Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle, and we didn't get as far as Sandringham, although of course we could have done," he said.
"We have no wish to cause any further embarrassment to Her Majesty, or have an ongoing legal battle with the palace.
"It would also be fair to say that we did not have much more material to publish which would have added greatly to our investigation in any case."