Prince Harry appealing UK government's police protection decision

Prince Harry is appealing a decision barring him from paying for his own police protection when he and his family visit the United Kingdom.

Harry filed a judicial review last September after the U.K. government dismissed his request to finance his own police protection on two different occasions, according to a statement from the prince’s legal spokesperson posted to Twitter by a Harper's Bazaar editor. The judicial review is just coming to light now following a leak in the British press, Reuters reported, citing Harry’s lawyers.

The couple and their family lost their publicly funded police protection in the U.K. when they split from the royal family. They have since been paying for a private security team in the U.S.

Now, however, Harry and Meghan, the duchess of Sussex, are looking to fund their own private security while visiting the U.K. with their children, Archie and Lilibet. Harry’s legal spokesperson said the royal couple’s private security team “cannot replicate the necessary police protection needed whilst in the UK.”

“In the absence of such protection, Prince Harry and his family are unable to return home,” the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson noted that Harry first offered to pay for U.K. police protection for himself and his family in January 2020, which was ultimately dismissed.

“He remains willing to cover the cost of security, as not to impose on the British taxpayer,” the spokesperson said, noting that Harry’s security was compromised when he was leaving a charity event in the U.K. in July 2021 “due to the absence of police protection.”

The spokesperson said Harry is challenging the decision with hopes that “this could be re-evaluated for the obvious and necessary protection required.”

The prince’s lawyers wrote in a separate statement cited by Reuters that “The UK 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. Prince Harry hopes that his petition – after close to two years of pleas for security in the UK – will resolve this situation,” the statement adds.