Prince Harry has returned to the UK to celebrate a special anniversary, arriving solo without Meghan Markle or his children, Archie and Lilibet. As his security issues rumble on with the Home Office, we look at what protections he has during his visit
When Prince Harry and Meghan decided to step back as working royals, it started a chain reaction that would see Harry’s life change forever.
What he had always known while living inside the Royal Family was left only as a memory, including the level of security to which he is entitled. Harry’s automatic taxpayer-funded security was removed officially when he and Meghan were in Canada and across the world borders were closing in an attempt to control the Covid pandemic.
In both his memoir and the couple’s Netflix documentary, the couple recall the fear they felt when they realised they were about to lose their security protection – despite, they say, the threat against them being unchanging.
Since then, Harry has been embroiled in an ongoing saga with the Home Office over his security in the UK, offering to pay for it himself – something that was denied. When the Duke visits these days, his security is managed on a “bespoke” case-by-case basis, rather than being automatically supplied. This means that sometimes Harry pays for security himself, and on other occasions the government deem it appropriate to pay for it and supply him with police protection.
Harry has returned to the UK to celebrate 10 years of the Invictus Games, which will be marked in a special service at St. Paul’s Cathedral. The last time he visited the UK was to see his father King Charles after he had been diagnosed with cancer and begun regular treatment. On this occasion, Harry was given a police escort from Heathrow Airport to central London, where he spent under an hour with his father – before Charles left for Sandringham to rest. A spokesperson has confirmed that during this trip, Harry won’t be meeting with his father, due to the King’s “full programme” adding that “The Duke of course is understanding of his father’s diary of commitments and various other priorities and hopes to see him soon.”
With the Duke of Sussex’s security arrangments now being “bespoke” rather than automatically supplied, it’s currently up to the Home Office to decide whether or not he will be given police protection when he returns. This has been a point of contention for Harry, who doesn’t feel able to bring his family with him unless police security is assured.
In 2020, Harry and Meghan were offered a helping hand by Hollywood mogul Tyler Perry – their daughter Princess Lilibet’s godfather – who offered them up his Beverly Hills mansion and the use of a security detail. The following year, when the couple took part in their bombshell interview with Oprah, Harry admitted that signing multimillion-pound deals with streaming services Netflix and Spotify had allowed the Sussexes to pay for their own private security team in the US.
In his memoir, Harry described his anxiety over the possibility of losing security in great detail – and the moment when it finally happened. “I was desperate to keep security,” he wrote. “That was what worried me most, my family’s physical safety. I wanted to prevent a repeat of history, another untimely death”. He also noted that the cost of a private security firm given to him by a company the palace recommended was estimated to be to the tune of a whopping £6 million annually.
A few months after their interview with Oprah, Harry returned to the UK where his legal team claimed his security was “compromised due to the absence of police protection”. He launched a bid to pay for police security himself, with his legal team saying, “The duke first offered to pay personally for UK police protection for himself and his family in January of 2020 at Sandringham. That offer was dismissed. He remains willing to cover the cost of security, as not to impose on the British taxpayer.”
In May 2023, this bid was denied, with lawyers for the Home Office saying in written submissions it was “not appropriate to support an outcome whereby wealthy individuals could ‘buy’ Protective Security from specialist police officers (potentially including armed officers),” when the Royal and VIP Executive Committee (RAVEC) had decided it not to be in the public interest.
In February 2024, his challenge against the removal of automatic security was denied in the High Court, as was the right to appeal. However, Harry’s not showing any indication that he is willing to give up on this fight just yet, with his legal team saying, “The Duke of Sussex will be seeking permission from the Court of Appeal to challenge the decision of Mr Justice Lane.”
The judge who made the ruling against Harry called RAVEC’s decision “legally sound” and ordered that Harry should pay 90 percent of the Home Office’s legal costs. However, Harry’s legal team has maintained that just because he stepped back as a working royal, the reality of the threat level against him and his family has not altered, and they have previously noted that former politicians continue to receive protection from the police, although they have left public office.
In 2022, former head of counter-terrorism for the Metropolitan Police, Neil Basu, said to Channel 4 News that there had been “disgusting and very real” threats against Meghan by the far-right, and “absolutely” been genuine threats against her life. Basu noted, “If you’d seen the stuff that was written and you were receiving it, the kind of rhetoric that’s online, if you don’t know what I know, you would feel under threat all of the time.”
Hannah Furness, royal editor for The Telegraph, told Hello Magazine’s Right Royal Podcast that this means Meghan might not come to the UK with her two children. “There is quite a heavy narrative that Meghan and the children won’t be coming back until they can resolve this security issue to their liking. But [Harry] will certainly be coming and going,” the expert explained.
The royal expert added in her view, RAVEC was not likely to reverse their decision: “Realistically I don’t think it’s going to change,” Furness said, adding that despite this, “anything [close to] remotely being an official engagement” she believed Harry would be offered police protection.
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