London’s High Court ruled against Prince Harry’s legal challenge to pay for his own police protection while in the UK, marking another setback in a series of lawsuits pursued by the Duke of Sussex in the country.
Prince Harry contested the decision to withdraw his police protection after stepping down as a working royal. However, Mr. Justice Chamberlain denied his bid to review the decision, refusing the duke the right to fund his own security with personal funds.
Meanwhile, a separate legal effort is ongoing to review the original decision of removing taxpayer-funded protection from Prince Harry.
The UK’s Home Office argued that the Executive Committee for the Protection of Royalty and Public Figures (RAVEC) deemed it inappropriate for wealthy individuals to “buy” protective security from specialist police officers, including armed officers. RAVEC concluded that the public interest did not warrant publicly-funded security for Prince Harry.
Mr. Justice Chamberlain has now rejected the judicial review for this claim.
This legal case is one among several ongoing lawsuits initiated by Prince Harry in the UK. Next month, he is expected to return to London to testify in a separate trial involving phone-hacking allegations against the Mirror Newspaper Group (MNG). The trial, which began on May 10, is anticipated to last for seven weeks.
On the trial’s first day, MNG apologized to Prince Harry for employing unlawful methods to gather information about his private life. Alongside three other claimants representing numerous celebrities, Prince Harry is suing MNG, alleging that its publications acquired private information through phone hacking and illicit means between 1991 and 2011.
Mirror Group Newspapers is contesting most of the allegations, arguing in court filings that some claims were brought too late and that there is insufficient evidence of phone hacking in all four cases.
The legal battle against the newspaper publisher is part of a broader conflict between Prince Harry, Meghan Markle, and British tabloids. The couple has accused these publications of privacy breaches and publishing false stories.
The court ruling follows Prince Harry and Meghan’s recent encounter with paparazzi during a car chase in New York, which their spokesperson claimed could have had catastrophic consequences. The couple, accompanied by Meghan’s mother, Doria Ragland, were pursued by photographers after attending the Women of Vision Awards at the Ziegfeld Ballroom. Although shaken by the incident, they emerged unharmed with the assistance of their security detail.
Prince Harry has consistently emphasized the importance of his family’s security and has drawn parallels between his wife’s treatment and the experiences of his late mother, Princess Diana, who tragically died in a high-speed car crash in Paris in 1997.
