Over UK security protection, Prince Harry’s legal challenge is unsuccessful

A London judge decided on Wednesday that Prince Harry was not wrongfully deprived of his publicly paid security detail while on visits to Britain after he left the royal family and relocated to the United States.

Judge Peter Lane stated in the High Court that it was neither illegal, unreasonable, or unjustified to decide to give Harry security on an individual basis.

The Duke of Sussex stated that because of the hate he and his wife faced on social media and the constant harassment they received from the media, he and his family felt threatened when travelling to the United Kingdom.

A government lawyer said Harry had been treated fairly and was still provided protection on some visits, citing a security detail that guarded him in June 2021 when he was chased by photographers after attending an event with seriously ill children at Kew Gardens in west London. The lawyer for the duke contended that the government group that evaluated Harry’s security needs acted irrationally and failed to follow its own policies that should have required a risk analysis of the duke’s safety.

Lawyer James Eadie stated that the committee that decided to deny his security request took into account the broader national impact of his mother, the late Princess Diana, and gave more weight to the possibility of a “likely significant public upset were a successful attack” on her son.

The 39-year-old younger son of King Charles III, Harry, has defied royal family custom by going to court to fight the government and tabloids in an attempt to hold them responsible for harassing him all of his life.

Harry filed six lawsuits in the High Court, including this one. Three concerned his security setup, while three others were tabloid publishers accusing him of utilising private detectives and phone hacking to surveil his life for news articles.

Harry achieved a significant success last year in his first trial against the Daily Mirror’s publisher about accusations of phone hacking. He won a court ruling and ultimately settled the remaining charges that were scheduled for trial. He was to get an interim payment of 400,000 pounds ($505,000) and be compensated for all of his legal bills, but the details of the settlement were not published.

In response to a Daily Mail piece that claimed he attempted to conceal his attempts to keep receiving government-funded protection, he recently withdrawn his libel complaint against the publication. Harry decided to abandon the lawsuit when a court determined that he had a higher chance of losing at trial because the publisher could demonstrate that the remarks made on his behalf were false and that the February 2022 piece was a “honest opinion” that wasn’t libellous.

Last year, Harry was unable to convince a different judge that he ought to have the option of paying for his own protection when visiting London, courtesy of the London Police. After a government attorney said that police shouldn’t be utilised as “private bodyguards for the wealthy,” the judge rejected that offer.