Part 2: The Press & The Royals a discussion

[Whaeanui]

Following on from this thread: Part 1 https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/the_royal_family/4786923-the-press-the-royals-a-discussion?page=1

As we know, the press often manufacture stories to create divisions between the women in the family, more often than the men. They have also hacked private communications, with cases ongoing. The public seem to feed off this and none of the family get treated very well except the monarch-although not always.

For discussion: do we think it is possible for the royal family to stay relevant and in the publics mind without their unhealthy relationship with the media, and how can they achieve that? How will previous and current legal proceedings alter the relationship?
Please do not intentionally derail this thread by discussing your personal dislike of particular family members or if they deserve it. I would really like to continue this discussion on how the royal family and the press interact, as above.

With deep pockets.

Re the RAVEC case didn't he say in a late statement he offered to pay, but it wasn't quite tallying with his initial statement? So put in as an afterthought?

Lost track of his cases!

Thank you Serenster! I feel a bit more up
to date now!

Thanks for clarifying, smilesy (and for the link)

Thanks Serenster. That makes a bit more sense!

https://amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/may/16/prince-harry-begins-second-legal-case-against-home-office-over-his-security

I remember it being reported he never actually offered to pay in the first submission - or that it was offered but only after proceedings had started? It was a late submission? Something like that.

So looks like he’s now bringing that as a separate judicial review?

But the media have mentioned this is an appeal?

All the reporting around this is so confusing, you’d think you’d just be able to read and it would all be laid out in an easy to understand manner!

Or is it appealing as in ‘he’s appealing RAVECs / The Police’s decision to not provide security for cash’ rather than appealing against a previous decision?

There’s so much to read about all of this and I’m slowly getting through some links shared here. Thanks to everyone adding them and sharing the updates. I thought this part of this excellent piece was really important whether you’re a fan of any of the claimants or not:

Everybody involved in hacking litigation has become wearily familiar with a certain ritual. Someone new will bring a claim against a tabloid. Perhaps a group of claimants will band together. After many hours of expensive preparation by lawyers for both sides, a case might get as far as a preliminary hearing, maybe several. Great bundles of evidence will have been assembled. Skeleton arguments, detailing the particulars of a claim or a defence, will have been drafted and redrafted. Dates for a warts-and-all trial might have been agreed. Then, before any such trial can take place—sometimes only days or hours before its commencement—everything is called off. Home time!
The claimant or claimants will have agreed to settle for, say, a six-figure sum, because if they were to risk going to trial, they might lose. Somehow worse, they might win, only to be awarded less in damages than they had been offered to settle out of court. In either case, they would be liable for costs. Because “costs tend to dwarf damages”, Harris explained, claimants are essentially blackmailed to settle. “You don’t want to lose your house in order to give millions of pounds to someone you hate… It means that if a wealthy defendant wants to avoid a trial, they generally always can, unless they’re facing a fabulously rich claimant. Unless they’re facing a claimant who won’t settle, whatever happens—a one-in-a-thousand claimant.”

https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/media/phone-hacking/61255/prince-harry-vs-the-press

Strictly speaking he’s not appealing this decision (that’s not possible), he’s asking for the decision to be judicially reviewed to check that it was made lawfully, reasonably, and rationally by the decision maker. Any decision a public body makes is, in theory, able to be reviewed by the courts if challenged by someone personally impacted by it.

In reality thought, judicial review is quite a difficult case to win - for example you won’t win just if you establish that another outcome would have been possible. The original process has to be fatally flawed. Unlike other types of claims you also have to persuade the court that your claim is worth bringing.

So the two decisions that Harry is challenging are firstly the decision RAVEC made to no longer provide him with taxpayer funded security after he stepped back from being a working royal and left the UK; and secondly its decision that he couldn’t demand security from the Met’s Royal and Diplomatic Protection Team on the basis that he’d pay for the cost of it personally.

Even Harry wins, he won’t get these decisions reversed, as such. Each decision would get referred back to RAVEC to make again, but this time without the flaws that the judicial review will have identified in the process. That could mean RAVEC could reach the same decision again, even after they consulted Harry, for example (one of the points he is arguing should have happened in each decision).

@Serenster

Thanks for the updates. I find them so useful when there’s so much noise about

The duke’s lawyers said the decision by Ravec was inconsistent with the 1996 Police Act which allows the “chief officer of the police” to provide special police services “subject to payment”.
Harry’s renewed case is related to an earlier attempt to challenge the decision that he would no longer be given the same degree of personal protective security when visiting the UK after stepping back as a working royal and moving to the US.
Shaheed Fatima KC, for Harry, said the case raised an “important issue of principle”.
She said the argument relied on by Ravec, “that allowing payment for protective security is contrary to the public interest and will undermine public confidence in the Metropolitan police Service”, could not be reconciled with the fact that parliament had expressly allowed for payment for such services.

So Harry’s lawyers are saying that there is a law that allows people to pay for police protection?
He also seems to be challenging providing security when in the UK, not US- or anywhere else.
I find the security issue interesting. He’s not an IPP if he’s not working for the head of state anymore, even if the risk is still the same. So in theory, if William just had enough one day, and he left, he would also have to provide his own security unless his father agreed to pay for it. It does raise the question, are they really that free to leave if the security costs which arose from being born into the family, are too high for you to personally cover for the rest of your life?

In reality though, judicial review is quite a difficult case to win

Yes indeed!

The proportion of civil judicial reviews in England and Wales, excluding immigration cases, which claimants won out of total claims lodged fell by 50% on 2020, according to analysis seen by the Guardian. The figure is 26% if the success rate is measured out of cases that went to a final hearing.

Just ask Jo Maugham!

So Harry’s lawyers are saying that there is a law that allows people to pay for police protection?

He is talking about the services provided by the forces to police football matches and big events (like Kate Moss’ wedding that often gets brought up on here as an attempt as a “gotcha”), and which are paid for.

As was discussed in court yesterday, those policing activities are very much Business as Usual for the police, can be staffed from all active officers and don’t require any specialist training or skills. The Diplomatic and Royal Protection Squads are quite different - they are proper “bodyguards”, need specialist training, carry weapons as a matter of course, and, the kicker, have to be prepared to put themselves into harm’s way if need be to protect their principal. As was pointed out in court yesterday, the do so because they are providing an important public interest, and the leaders of the Met think it inappropriate to ask them to provide a similar role just because someone is wealthy.

Just ask Jo Maugham!

Thanks, but I don’t need to, I already know this myself.

Since I managed to mangle my typing above, sorry, here’s what the Met actually said:

“Officers who provide security expose themselves to unique risks. One doesn’t need to use too much imagination to work out what sort of risks are involved. It can’t be right that officers are expected to present themselves and expose themselves to that level of risk not in the public interest but because policing body is to be financially compensated. It’s only justified where public interest requires unique policing operation”

The Met also said that providing armed police officers to those who pay would divert resources from those who warrant protection and “would create a precedent in which other wealthy individuals could argue that they too should be permitted to pay for such services”

☺️ ok Serenster, i wasn’t actually telling you to literally ask him. It was meant to be funny.

just because someone is wealthy
It’s a little more complicated than that in Harry’s case. He’s still got the same risk as before, and his US security firm can’t access the intelligence is his argument, to protect him fully when in the UK. It’s clearly an unprecedented situation.

Do former PMs get protection? Is it for life?

If Charles dies before Camilla, how would she be protected after that? I’m assuming she would withdraw from public service but maybe she wouldn’t and then her security would be covered.

@PicturesOfDogs No wonder it's confusing, I think he has about 6 legal cases ongoing!

The Police quite rightly argue that the officers would be putting their lives at risk simply because someone has the ability to pay, which is intrinsically unfair. Harry is asking for armed police protection which is outside normal policing.

From Harry's point of view he wants the 'armed' element because he feels his life is at risk, however this country has such strict gun laws it's unlikely anyone except a trained and armed terrorist, would target him, although his dumb Taliban comments, I'm sure, upped that risk.

Quite honestly this is a mess of his own making. He seriously expected his half in half out nonsense to be accepted which would include armed security for him and his family despite living in America or Canada. As for the Taliban comments...has he even apologised for his latest racist comments?

Do former PMs get protection? Is it for life?

Tony Blair certainly does - see this article here about it. Liz Truss? who knows! 🤣

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jun/12/tony-blair-police-protection-costs-taxpayers-millions-report-claims

Good on him it's really time the press were held to account.

Also, there is gun crime here. Anyone using a gun tends to be a criminal so they probably won't care that they're illegal (and I don't think all guns are illegal).

I forgot about Liz Truss… surely not 🤦🏾‍♀️

He’s still got the same risk as before, and his US security firm can’t access the intelligence is his argument, to protect him fully when in the UK.

RAVEC’s previous position (although this is likely to be clarified in the litigation, I would have thought) is that Harry, like anyone else with a high public profile, will receive official protection if their assessment is that the level of threats against him warrant it. That is exactly the same criteria they apply to everyone other than a small category who are always protected.

Harry’s first judicial review is because he wants to be included in that small category which is always protected, no matter the assessed threat level. Interestingly, even when he was a working royal, he wasn’t in that category. So in effect, he is now demanding a higher level of security than he had when he was actually a working royal and living in the UK.

@kirinm yes we definitely have guns here, regardless of legality around ownership… who is the actor guy who did programmes on gangs and I’m pretty sure as part of that programme he was uncovering how many guns come into the UK, it was a lot. I’m going to have to go look that up now.,

Ross Kemp! He did a special programme on it, I’ve just been reading about it. Quite scary. He thinks our police will all be armed one day. That’s an awful thought.