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LONDON — Prince Harry has lost his appeal against the U.K. government’s decision to axe his publicly-funded security detail at Britain’s High Court.
King Charles III’s second son’s protection was downgraded in February 2020 when he stepped down as a full-time member of the royal family and moved to the United States with his wife, Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex. That meant the British state provided security on a case-by-case basis.
Harry, who is currently the fifth in line to the throne, had argued that the body responsible for protecting the royal family was not following its own rules, that all high-profile members of the Royal Family, like the king and his brother Prince William, have around-the-clock protection
The Royal and VIP Executive Committee, known as Ravec, took the decision on his security arrangements after he and Meghan stepped down from being a working member of the Royal Family in 2020. Currently his security in the U.K. is decided on a case-by-case basis, the same way as the country’s other high-profile visitors.
In their ruling Friday, judges Lord Justice David Bean, Lord Justice Andrew Edis and Sir Geoffrey Vos dismissed his appeal.
Harry “was in effect stepping in and out of the cohort of protection provided by Ravec,” Sir Geoffrey Vos told the court.
“Outside the U.K. he was outside the cohort, but when in the U.K. his security would be considered as appropriate depending on the circumstances,” he said. “It was imposssible, I said in my judgement to say that this reasoning was illogical or innappropriate. Indeed it seemed sensible,” he added.
In an earlier written submission to the court, his legal team said that Harry “inherited a security risk at birth, for life.” It added that he “served two tours of combat duty in Afghanistan, and in recent years his family has been subjected to well-documented neo-Nazi and extremist threats.”
Harry and his wife felt “forced to step back” from their roles “as they considered they were not being protected by the institution,” it said.
Harry has said he and his family were under particular threat because of the abuse his wife receives from some sections of the public and the media, which he has said are racially motivated.
Rejecting his challenge in February 2024, Britain’s High Court said the decision to change Harry’s security status was neither irrational nor procedurally unfair. Two months later he lost the right to appeal the ruling, although that was later overturned.
Harry failed to persuade a different judge last year that he should be able to privately pay for London’s Metropolitan Police force to guard him while he is in the U.K. after a government lawyer argued that officers shouldn’t be used as “private bodyguards for the wealthy.”
Harry has been a regular in British courts in recent years, challenging both his security arrangements and tabloid newspaper publishers for allegedly hacking phones and using private investigators to snoop on his life for news stories.
Rupert Murdoch’s company, News Group Newspapers, agreed to pay “substantial damages” to Harry after settling a long-running legal battle. NGN admitted that between 1996 and 2011, staff on The Sun newspapers used unlawful methods to dig up private information about Harry and his late mother, Princess Diana.
The duke is also among a group of celebrities suing another publisher, Associated Newspapers Limited (ANL), which prints the Daily Mail, accusing it of lawbreaking in its attempts to gather information on them. The trial is due to start next year.
In 2023, he dropped a libel case against ANL for its coverage of his legal battle over personal security. And the same year, he was awarded 140,600 pounds ($179,350) after successfully bringing a phone-hacking claim against Mirror Group Newspapers.
Alongside these courtroom battles, Harry has endured a turbulent relationship with his own family since leaving the United Kingdom, including with his father, King Charles III who has been diagnosed with cancer.
