Four years after Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan stepped down as working members of the royal family, Harry has lost his legal battle to overturn a British government decision that downgraded the level of police protection his family would receive in his home country.
The U.K.’s High Court ruled today that the Home Office’s Executive Committee for the Protection of Royalty and Public Figures (RAVEC) did not act irrationally or unreasonably by reducing the Sussexes’ taxpayer-funded security status after he and Meghan stopped carrying out public duties.
The Home Office said the security status for Harry’s visits home would be decided on a case-by-case basis, with “bespoke arrangements, specifically tailored to him,” per the BBC.
Despite the setback, a spokesperson for the Duke of Sussex told Harper’s Bazaar that Harry plans to appeal the ruling and “hopes he will obtain justice.”
“The Duke is not asking for preferential treatment, but for a fair and lawful application of RAVEC’s own rules, ensuring that he receives the same consideration as others in accordance with RAVEC’s own written policy,” the spokesperson said. “In February 2020, RAVEC failed to apply its written policy to the Duke of Sussex and excluded him from a particular risk analysis. The Duke’s case is that the so-called ‘bespoke process’ that applies to him is no substitute for that risk analysis.”
Harry has pursued this legal challenge since 2022, claiming he feels unsafe bringing his wife and their two children—Prince Archie, four, and Princess Lilibet, two—to the United Kingdom due to security threats. The High Court rejected Harry’s bid to privately pay for his own security and police protection in May 2023.
“The U.K. will always be Prince Harry’s home and a country he wants his wife and children to be safe in … . With the lack of police protection comes too great a personal risk,” a spokesperson said in a statement released in 2022. “The Duke and Duchess of Sussex personally fund a private security team for their family, yet that security cannot replicate the necessary police protection needed whilst in the U.K. In the absence of such protection, Prince Harry and his family are unable to return to his home.”
The duke’s legal spokesperson previously told Bazaar that the royal had “inherited a security risk at birth, for life,” considering that “he remains sixth in line to the throne, 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. ... While his role within the institution has changed, his profile as a member of the royal family has not. Nor has the threat to him and his family.”
As an associate editor at HarpersBAZAAR.com, Chelsey keeps a finger on the pulse on all things celeb news. She also writes on social movements, connecting with activists leading the fight on workers' rights, climate justice, and more. Offline, she’s probably spending too much time on TikTok, rewatching Emma (the 2020 version, of course), or buying yet another corset.
