Question about police protection security for Archie when growing up

[Guylan]

Harry and Meghan implied Archie would not have ever been provided with security, even as a baby, as Meghan said she was very scared of having to offer up their baby for the traditional post hospital photo op knowing that Archie wouldn’t be kept safe.

But I have read as a full-time working royal, Harry and his family would have been entitled to 24-hour security by Metropolitan Police protection officers.

I understand when Archie is an adult he will move further down the succession list if the Cambridge children have their own families and it is reported he would not have been expected to be playing a key role in royal duties when older. So he probably would have been a non working royal in adulthood and so would not then get security. However, if it is true as a full-time working royal, Harry and his family would have been entitled to 24-hour security by Metropolitan Police protection officers, why would Meghan claim Archie would not get security until at least age 18 including as a newborn during the traditional post hospital photo op?

Any knowledgeable folks on this issue? Thank you.

Also just for the record as it’s annoying me as they are not being acknowledged, there are already two biracial children in the extended royal family who are often on the balcony at family occasions like Trooping if the colour and they are the Gloucesters grandchildren whose father is of Maori descent .

It does seem unlikely Archie and his parents were assessed according to the process outlined by TooSpotty as not needing police protection in a post birth hospital photo op. Yet this was in effect Meghan’s claim as she said she was very scared of having to offer up Archie for the traditional post birth hospital photo op knowing that Archie wouldn’t be kept safe. We will never know as sounds like this is understandably private info.

@SallyLockheart

Pourmeawine. Does being an IPP confer higher levels of security or are all senior working royals classed as IPPs?

IPPs and Senior working royals are one and the same. Eg you can't be an IPP if you're not a senior working royal. When they released their manifesto in Jan 2020 they assumed then would remain IPPs (they stated this on their website at the time) and this is their issue - that they didn't realise that when they "quit" this would remove their security. They thought they could have everything and were told no. But if we go back to the time of the birth, there is no reason why Archie wouldn't have had security as he would have been covered by his parents/household security as well as the general royal family security.

Yes Lady Davinia Windsor married Gary Lewis (though I think they separated a couple of years ago) and they have two children Tane Mahuta and Senna Kowhai.

@TooSpotty

Argh. This just keeps being repeated.

I know about this from my professional background.

Public protection is given on the grounds of risk. A threat assessment is done covering every aspect of threat, and kept under continual review. Members of the Royal family who are considered to be at enough risk are protected, some 24 hours a day, some while carrying out duties, some while only carrying out specific duties. Some have protection at their homes, others don’t. There is no rule about who does and who doesn’t get it - the title of an individual is irrelevant.

It is possible to refuse protection if offered.

Around a decade ago the basis of protection moved to prioritise risk assessments over convention and several members of the Royal family subsequently lost their existing protection arrangements. There was no automatic connection to their ages when this happened; it happened more widely that is being discussed on here. Quite rightly the level of protections is generally not common knowledge.

Protecting someone full time is very expensive. It’s not just a bodyguard, it’s far more complicated. When someone with protection travels abroad it is enormously expensive because it triggers all sorts of additional overtime and subsistence costs for police officers. Protection offered by the host country at their own cost would be very unlikely.

Had Archie stayed in this country, his risk would have been assessed on an ongoing basis and protection decided accordingly. The various organisations that put the threat assessment together are very, very thorough.

The above.

The title and security are not interlinked in the way some people are assuming.

Prince or not would not be a factor in Archies case nor actually Harry's.

One thing in the interview was he said he'd never thought they'd take his security away. He obviously saw this as his birthright. I think this explains M comments in the interview as she was projecting what H had "felt" because that's what he told her.

Yet he had failed to understand a) the security was not a birthright but a risk assessment b) it's only currently provided to working royals (sometimes only when they are working) c) royals based in the U.K.

The assumption that the costs of this security would be provided when he left the country and "the firm" was naive.

Aside from the massively inflated costs of providing security abroad it's also more risky because The Metropolitan Police do not have the same access to "local" intelligence services they do in the U.K.

There are also issues re: firearms licences and use in non domestic engagements.

It's been estimated that providing security in the US would have cost up to 5x as much as in the U.K. - from 2 to 10million.

Do you think they have the right to make a lifestyle decision that costs the tax payer millions?

I'm not unsympathetic to them and on such threads have said I've actually no issues with the Netflix etc deals. Even a £40m fortune won't last long with huge security costs so they do need to source some income.

But I don't agree with the narrative that they are entitled to free security having left the duties of being royal and the country.

This thread remains very confused. The facts are:

1. The decision on who receives police protection and to what level is taken on a risk basis, from the threat assessments put together by JTAC. That covers the threat of crime, terrorism, fixated individuals etc. The profile of the individual is an element of the threat assessment but not the whole of it. There is simply no way that the Sussexes could have been told Archie would never get security because if the threat demanded it, it would be offered.
2. Protection is proportionate - ie it counters the risk. So it could run from a fleet of armed outriders (very rare indeed - see visiting US Presidents) to an unarmed single police officer, from one event a year in a specific location to 24/7.
3. Some royals were protected previously more by convention than risk assessment, shall we say. So when they lost it, it wasn’t that the threat to them dropped, or triggered by age, but an adjustment to the approach. The media covered this back in 2011 when Home Office funding was reduced, particularly around Beatrice and Eugenie.
4. Protecting anyone permanently abroad would be prohibitively expensive, setting aside issues of reciprocity. Risk assessments include mitigations in place, so if the Sussexes were living in an alarmed and gated mansion with a private security firm on call, for example, and carrying out no public events, the risk to them shrinks.
5. Anyone trying to explain the facts, eg the Met, appears to be fighting a losing battle on social media! Obviously the security that needs to surround some of this just adds to the conspiracy theories.

There is simply no way that the Sussexes could have been told Archie would never get security because if the threat demanded it, it would be offered.

Thanks. The info confirms to me Meghan’s claim she was very scared of having to offer up Archie for the traditional post birth hospital photo op knowing that Archie wouldn’t be kept safe- implying no security- is not credible.

• caveat to my comment above, should say ‘unlikely’ - as in seems unlikely Archie and his parents were assessed as not needing police protection in a post birth hospital photo

My best guess on where truth lies would be that she wanted security of a type that wouldn’t be provided. But that really is a guess.
I’ve seen for example a lot of people on here mention threats against Harry’s life by Neo-Nazis. That is obviously very scary. The police would look at exactly what intelligence there was on the nature of those threats and look to counter them, eg were they threatening to bomb his house? Shoot him? Run him over? Each requires a different type of protection. Intelligence would be gathered on how credible those threats are. Intelligence can and does fail, but it succeeds far more often, which we don’t hear about because it stops the bad things happening.
None of that means that the mother of a newborn baby might not be freaked out by being asked to do something that would make her child vulnerable in her eyes, but I would question what level of security would have made a difference. Maybe in fact her decision not to be in public at all was the right one for her risk appetite, and that’s fine.

In that case why were they keeping H working. And why was it an issue for him to get demoted to the same level as his cousins.

Because they really needed Harry and Meghan. When the slimming down was first announced, there were a lot more working royals.

The Queen, Prince Philip, two Gloucesters, four or five Kents, Charles & Camilla, Anne, Andrew, Edward & Sophie, William and future wife, Harry and future wife. Depending on just how early this was talked about, the Queen Mother night still have been doing a few engagements. (You have to remember that a lot of the generation above the Queen died young, so the cousins became the senior royals when they were quite young.)

Now Philip has retired, the Kents and Gloucesters are in their 80s, Andrew is out. Now Harry and Megan have gone too.

It's possibly heading towards being too slimmed down!

What should have happened is that Harry and Megan would become like Edward and Sophie are now — they'd be working royals, but their children wouldn't. When George, Charlotte and Louis were old enough, they'd join as working royals. So the brothers/sisters of the monarch would be working royals, but the cousins wouldn't.

One of the reasons about how polarised H&M threads get is because some posters can't grasp how people can tell the truth yet simultaneously mislead (or even lie) by omission/context/details.

Sometimes perhaps they don't know they are doing it because (as I suspect with H and thus informed M) that security was his by virtue of who he was. A Prince by birth. He said as much in the interview.

Yet the truth is, his royal status (and remember that's one that can change over time and not just actions) is just one factor in determining how his eligibility not his right to security is determined and equally the extent of that security.

I think H&M didn't realise that by stepping down from being senior royals, that they no longer met the IPP requirements. The IPP requirements are set by the UN not the royal family... By choosing to live in the US not the UK, H&M didn't understand that British security could not be paid for by British tax payers and it was completely unrealistic to expect this level of staffing (cost, staff leaving their families, etc).

This was then further blown up for H&M with Charles "cutting them off". So unlike Edward's girls, daddy would no longer be funding security. H&M would have to cough up and they are not happy about this. This is a family matter and shouldn't be discussed publicly.

H has his inheritance from Dianna and the Queen Mother, M has her personal acting income, and the Netflix/Spotify deals have quoted at $50M USD.

If H&M have chosen to live as private citizens who are generating income from being royal, why shouldn't they cover their security costs?

Archie would become a prince if and when Charles became king. Children and grandchildren of the Monarch can be called prince and princess. Princess Anne, daughter of the monarch chose for her children not to have any titles so that they could lead independent lives. Nothing was changed because of Meghan or Archie. The only recent (2012- before Charlotte was born) change to have been made was to include females in lineage because they weren’t before.

The queen is the queen because she didn’t have a brother- her parents didn’t have a son. Her father’s brother abdicated. Her father became king. When he died Elizabeth became queen because there wasn’t a son and she was the oldest sister.

Prince George is prince became is in direct line to the throne. It will be Charles, William and then George excepting any early deaths.

Nothing was changed to exclude Meghan or Archie. Harry is quite far down the line now. The queen only changed things to allow women to be included.

If people choose to be non working royals- then the tax payer cannot be expected to pay for security.

Harry said his mother saw that coming because she knew the public had said ‘we don’t want to pay for their lavish lifestyles anymore’. Both Charles and the queen began slimming down the royals who would be paid for nearly 20 years ago.

But his plans included his sons and their families. However, they chose to step back and not be working royals therefore the public shouldn’t be expected to pay for their security. The public helped fund their wedding and the house they left. Charles has still given Harry millions of public money.

There’s nothing to see here except the public being shafted by wealthy people again.

Princess Eugenie and Prince Beatrice don't get protection, they are GC of the monarch just like Archie will be when Charles is king.

But they did as children, as they dropped down the line of succession their security dropped.

There was no rule change for Kate and Wills kids, them being Prince and Princess is in line with William and Harry having the same treatment.

Actually there were changes, letters patent were issued because Charlotte was not automatically a princess even though she would take precedence over a younger child, male or female.

@Jamboree01

Archie would become a prince if and when Charles became king. Children and grandchildren of the Monarch can be called prince and princess. Princess Anne, daughter of the monarch chose for her children not to have any titles so that they could lead independent lives. Nothing was changed because of Meghan or Archie. The only recent (2012- before Charlotte was born) change to have been made was to include females in lineage because they weren’t before.

The queen is the queen because she didn’t have a brother- her parents didn’t have a son. Her father’s brother abdicated. Her father became king. When he died Elizabeth became queen because there wasn’t a son and she was the oldest sister.

Prince George is prince became is in direct line to the throne. It will be Charles, William and then George excepting any early deaths.

Nothing was changed to exclude Meghan or Archie. Harry is quite far down the line now. The queen only changed things to allow women to be included.

If people choose to be non working royals- then the tax payer cannot be expected to pay for security.

Harry said his mother saw that coming because she knew the public had said ‘we don’t want to pay for their lavish lifestyles anymore’. Both Charles and the queen began slimming down the royals who would be paid for nearly 20 years ago.

The law was changed pre-George.

If you’d listened there was talks to change the law to preclude Archie from becoming a Prince when Charles becomes Monarch.

As Harry said he didn’t want to stop being a working Royal and this was reported over a year ago as well but wanted to step back a bit and have less Royal Engagements.

@Guylan it is highly unfair for you to say Meghan’s claims were not credible. Under normal circumstances I wouldn’t want to do a photo shoot with my newborn baby, add into the mix the specific threats made towards Archie from the far right. I’m not sure there is enough protection in the world to want to parade my newborn just so the public can see a picture. I also think William and Kate should be able to do the same without being judged harshly.

Meghan said she got married three days before the big event- complete lie - invalid for a marriage ceremony.
Meghan said Archie was not going to be made a Prince. No external validation. Big fat lie again?

Basically they are really really peeved they have to pay for security
They didn’t have to DO the Netflix deal to pay for security. Making millions from being independent was always their aim last January (and after getting free security worldwide)

@sashh

Princess Eugenie and Prince Beatrice don't get protection, they are GC of the monarch just like Archie will be when Charles is king.

But they did as children, as they dropped down the line of succession their security dropped.

There was no rule change for Kate and Wills kids, them being Prince and Princess is in line with William and Harry having the same treatment.

Actually there were changes, letters patent were issued because Charlotte was not automatically a princess even though she would take precedence over a younger child, male or female.

Please read my posts. What you are saying about Beatrice and Eugenie is untrue.

@TooSpotty

My best guess on where truth lies would be that she wanted security of a type that wouldn’t be provided. But that really is a guess. I’ve seen for example a lot of people on here mention threats against Harry’s life by Neo-Nazis. That is obviously very scary. The police would look at exactly what intelligence there was on the nature of those threats and look to counter them, eg were they threatening to bomb his house? Shoot him? Run him over? Each requires a different type of protection. Intelligence would be gathered on how credible those threats are. Intelligence can and does fail, but it succeeds far more often, which we don’t hear about because it stops the bad things happening. None of that means that the mother of a newborn baby might not be freaked out by being asked to do something that would make her child vulnerable in her eyes, but I would question what level of security would have made a difference. Maybe in fact her decision not to be in public at all was the right one for her risk appetite, and that’s fine.

Thank you @TooSpotty that was very helpful and makes sense.

@TenaciousOnePointOne, you are right it was unfair of me. TooSpotty’s final comment has given me a better perspective.

The rules on who is a prince and who isn’t came into force in 1917 (and were used to reduce the number of people eligible so the idea of slimming down is not new) so not that long in the grand scheme of things. Charles won’t be in a position to issue new letter patent until he is king and the Queen is wedded to tradition so I don’t think she will make changes to title eligibility.

As small children B and as did not have their own individual protection it was linked to their parents. However once their parents were divorced and their mother no longer had security then they had to have their own.

The point is that whilst in the U.K. the Met would have continually assessed the risk depending this circumstance adjusted accordingly . But as has been explained repeatedly on this thread once they are outside the U.K. the situation becomes very difficult. Plus the fact that actually the taxpayer was very unhappy about having to pick up the bill.

However, I suspect that the Queen will as part of the ‘reconciliation’ offer to pay their security ( in exchange for their silence )

@TooSpotty thank you for your fact based assessment! Should have a sticky on it.
And @MrsTabithaTwitchit how terrible to think that the monarch can be blackmailed by means of tv interviews

Please read my posts. What you are saying about Beatrice and Eugenie is untrue.

Beatrice and Eugenie had PPO's until they were adults. They have private security now after their father tried, and failed, to stop their security being removed when it was deemed they didn't need it.

Yes as they dropped down the line of succession. Harry had dropped down the line of succession AND has refused to be a working royal.

Williams children are children of the future king. George is a future king. They are in direct line of succession.