After Prince Harry stopped being a “working royal”, his security arrangements changed, and it was no longer provided free of charge by the Royal House.
Having to devise some other form of protection, Prince Harry wanted to pay for it while visiting the UK, but he wanted to buy it from the London Metropolitan Police; in essence turning public servants into a private protection force for hire.
In the past week, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have been involved in what their spokesperson described as a “near catastrophic car chase” involving paparazzi in New York, an account whose veracity has been widely questioned—even by New York mayor Eric Adams, who pointed out that a high-speed car chase in the traffic-clogged streets of the city would be virtually impossible.
Arguably, such a sensational car chase-if it occurred in the dangerous way that the Prince’s publicity representatives claimed– could sway a future decision on the part of The Home Office about protective measures and who pays for them while the Sussexes are in the UK? Thus far they have been unsuccessful in their attempts to procure such services from a public source.
In July the Prince’s proposal to buy the services from the Metropolitan Police had been rejected by a committee of the Home Office.
Prince Harry challenged how this decision had been reached by the Executive Committee for the Protection of Royalty and Public Figures – known as RAVEC – which covers security for high-profile figures, including senior royals.
” RAVEC has exceeded its authority, its power, because it doesn’t have the power to make this decision in the first place,” Prince Harry’s lawyers had told the court.
They argued that there were provisions in legislation allowing for payment for “special police services” and as such “payment for policing is not inconsistent with the public interest or public confidence in the Metropolitan Police Service”.
But lawyers for the Home Office said the type of protection under discussion, which could mean “specialist officers as bodyguards”, was not the same as funding for extra policing for football matches.
A barrister for the Metropolitan Police argued that it would be unreasonable to expose officers to danger because of “payment of a fee by a private individual”.
The Home Office legal team said the RAVEC committee had unanimously rejected the offer of private payment and that it was a matter of policy to oppose the idea that a “wealthy person should be permitted to ‘buy’ protective security”.
Prince Harry wished to challenge that decision and filed an appeal that has now also been rejected. The Home Office essentially said that there was nothing new to present and that consequently, “Given the nature of the arguments now advanced by the claimant, the court can be confident that such representations would have been highly likely to have made no substantial difference in any event.”
