Do you think Andrew will face any criminal charges?

[LotsInCommon]

I’m only now reading Virginias book and it’s a very difficult read.

It’s 7 months on from Andrews arrest for misconduct in public office. Do you think he will be charged with anything to do with that? Do you think he’ll be charged with sexual abuse and rape?

@Chocolatethumbprints - I agree with some of what you say. However, since you appear to allude to it, I will note that the Guardian's reports about Queen's Consent (as it was at the time) being used to change proposed laws to favour the royal family's interests would not have seen the light of day if they had thought to run them past an actual lawyer. None of the laws mentioned in the articles contain any of the alleged exemptions (at least, not in the articles I've checked and I believe I've checked most of them). The nearest they get is with an act where the clause to which they refer actually has the opposite effect to that claimed.

This isn’t correct about the FOI requests imho.

GDPR rules do not, generally speaking, prevent records about AMW’s time as TE from being disclosed under FOI requests.

I’m not a lawyer but nonetheless I would argue that in UK law, public interest generally overrides personal privacy when it relates to the accountability of public officials with regard to their conduct and spending.

When personal data relates to a public role, especially a taxpayer-funded position like a TE, the law considers whether disclosure is "fair and lawful."

This is borne out by the fact that the government has already published files detailing information about the then Prince Andrew’s appointment to become a TE in 2001.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/feb/24/government-documents-andrew-mountbatten-windsor-trade-envoy

And I don’t think that anyone can deny that the public interest argument in the AMW debacle is quite compelling given that he allegedly shared sensitive government information with Jeffrey Epstein and other unauthorised businessmen and allegedly endangered national security by allegedly allowing dodgy Libyan arms dealers, an alleged Chinese spy and an alleged trafficker of vulnerable women access to crown estate properties.

As I understand it, where there is a strong public interest factor, GDPR can’t be used as a blanket shield to block the release of official communications, travel itineraries, or expense records.

However there are other exemptions under the FOI Act which are used to block the release of information, such as, an ongoing criminal investigation, commercial interest and national security and, as Lownie discovered, the special exemptions accorded the Sovereign and RF.

https://www.cfoi.org.uk/2026/02/uk-government-under-pressure-to-release-files-relating-to-andrew-mountbatten-windsors-time-as-trade-envoy/

Not being a lawyer; I confess I don’t fully understand your point here.

Nor am I sure to which Guardian article you refer.

Is it this one?

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/07/revealed-queen-lobbied-for-change-in-law-to-hide-her-private-wealth

The point about King’s consent, as it is now, is that Buckingham Palace maintains that it is a "purely formal" rubber stamping of legislation, but historical documents leaked via the Guarfian revealed that the royal family has used advance sight of these bills to secretly lobby ministers for changes to legislation that largely impacts upon their financial status.

But my main point is that, if laws apply to the RF in the same way as they do to the rest of us, then weren’t they obliged to report AMW’s alleged illegal behaviour when they became aware of it? And the people in the Royal household who knew?

For the sake of argument in this instance, let’s leave out the alleged SA of vulnerable women and focus on AMW’s alleged financial misconduct. According to Lownie, the late QE2 was informed about it by the head of the FO, diplomats and intelligence sources.

And the staff at the FO who normally monitor expenses and flights etc and whether business secrets were being leaked should also have reported AMW’s alleged crimes too, some of which imho amount to straightforward fraud; what were they doing? Didn’t they have a legal responsibility to report suspected criminality also?

You would get results of an foi if I was writing letters to government departments as part of my job. The royals are not contacting government departments as private individuals

Ahh the old ‘Anne’s dog attacked children so she was fined’defence !

Her dog attack happened in plain sight and proves nothing.
Rather like the talking to from the police that Philip got after he crashed into a woman’s car.
Window dressing.
What did William and Charles know about Epstein and when ? THAT is the real question.

As for the GDPR explanation - shades of ‘private when it suits them , public when it suits them’ wheeze that the Windsors use to avoid tax.

The fact is the public have a right to know about the financial and legal machinations of this publicly funded family. We are not asking for details of their private life .

We would not have known that the Windsors had excluded themselves from 100s of laws were it not for the 10 year legal battle that the Guardian pursued .
What else do we not know ?

Would we have known about the 33000 emails delivered to Buckingham palace in 2020 re Andrew’s behaviour as trade envoy were it not for a separate court case?

The dichotomy is this family enjoys medieval style above the law exemptions and secrecy based on being set apart as moral exemplars ( head of the church) and supposedly above the fray.

When in reality the next person you pass in the street is likely to be of better character - based on some of the revelations about the Windsors that are slowly leaking out .

Don’t take my word for it

Anyone who wants real detail should read Norman Baker ‘And what do you do ?’
and ‘Royal mint , national debt ‘

He was a long time MP and former privy councillor. He knows the system inside out

He also has a Substack worth reading .

We would not have known that the Windsors had excluded themselves from 100s of laws were it not for the 10 year legal battle that the Guardian pursued .
What else do we not know ?

The Guardian's 10 year legal battle was about publication of Charles' letters to the government whilst he was heir to the throne. It proved to be a complete damp squib.

The Guardian has published a series of articles on Queen's Consent alleging the Windsors had excluded themselves from 100s of laws without bothering to check their accuracy with an actual lawyer. If they had done so these articles would not have seen the light of day. The various Acts of Parliament mentioned to not contain the alleged exemptions for the Windsors. The nearest the journalists got was with an Act that does contain the claimed clause, but it has the opposite effect to that claimed by the journalists.

@Chocolatethumbprints - I was trying to keep it simple!

Under GDPR, there is a presumption against disclosure of any data related to an identifiable living individual. Any organisation intending to disclose such data must have a lawful basis for doing so. A public body may be able to rely on it being in the public interest to release information, but this is not an automatic get out. The courts are the ultimate arbiter as to whether the release is in the public interest. The differentiate between something being interesting to the public and being in the public interest. Also, given ECHR (which is part of UK law through the Human Rights Act) gives individuals a right to privacy, they set a high bar for saying that it is in the public interest to release information.

The government has chosen to publish some information about Andrew's appointment as a trade envoy under pressure from MPs. As far as I can see, the information released is primarily about the process and doesn't tell us anything we didn't already know. Since the government has taken this decision, it is open to Andrew to challenge it prior to the information being released or to seek compensation after it is released. The courts will then decide whether the government was justified in releasing the information.

Turning to Andrew Lownie's requests and similar, we know these were turned down. No civil servant is going to take the decision that it is in the public interest to release the information requested. That would be up to politicians. We don't know whether Lownie's requests were considered by any politicians. All we know for sure is that they were refused. If Lownie believes there is a public interest in the information being released, it is open to him to refer the matter to the ICO and, if that fails, take it to court. He has done so with some of his FOI requests, but lost. That is exactly the same process as would have been followed if Lownie had requested information about Peter Mandelson's time as US Ambassador, which would have produced the same result for the same reasons.

@prh47bridge

Yes that’s right, my mistake , the 10 year legal battle was to expose Charles letters trying to influence politicians to his views. I do not view that as a damp squib - Charles has tried to get his beliefs into parliamentary business - he tried to get homeopathy onto the NHS for example. Thank goodness most politicians have more sense than to listen to him. But it blew up the ‘politically neutral ‘ line .

However the Guardian did reveal how the Windsors exclude themselves from 100s of laws. That would have been both Elizabeth and Charles and now Charles and William both sticking their beaks into bills to exclude themselves well before it is passed into law.

So @prh47bridge are you stating the the Windsors have NOT used queen/kings consent to exclude themselves from 100s of laws that apply to the rest of us ?

The point about King’s consent, as it is now, is that Buckingham Palace maintains that it is a "purely formal" rubber stamping of legislation, but historical documents leaked via the Guardian revealed that the royal family has used advance sight of these bills to secretly lobby ministers for changes to legislation that largely impacts upon their financial status.

The Guardian did not come up with any positive evidence of secret lobbying. Their argument was, in essence, the Queen had advanced sight of these bills, the resulting Act contains some exemptions for royal properties therefore these exemptions were a result of the Queen's lobbying. Since the Acts did not actually contain the claimed exemptions, their entire argument falls apart.

The journalists also appear to have misunderstood what the Crown Estates are. They appear to think that they are land estates owned by the royal family. They are not. The Duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall, and the monarch's private estates are not part of the Crown Estates. The Crown Estates are government land, so when the government puts an exemption in an Act of Parliament for the Crown Estates it is exempting itself from that law, not the Windsors.

Does the royal family lobby the government? I wouldn't be surprised. It is open to anyone to lobby the government, and I would expect the royal household to be paying more attention to draft legislation than the average man in the street. Has any of their lobbying resulted in changes to legislation? Possibly, but the Guardian has not produced any evidence of this. As I say, I have read most, possibly all, of the articles and the claims made in them about exemptions in the law are consistently wrong.

That’s some wriggling to get off the hook @prh47bridge ! So anyone can lobby the government? Yes. But can we do so in the same way the Windsors do ? Absolutely not

Your attempt to dismiss the secret lobbying is transparent

So all the newspapers and documentaries setting out how the Windsors have excluded themselves from laws are all wrong are they ?

Sorry, I posted too soon in error before my post was edited correctly. Another post to follow shortly!

@prh47bridge

I am sure I read that the Windsors had excluded themselves from the EqualityAct .

Are you saying that is wrong too ?

I am saying that the 100s of exemptions claimed by the Guardian simply do not exist. If you look at the various Acts they cited as containing exemptions, you will find that they do not include the claimed exemptions.

To give a couple of examples, the Guardian alleged that the Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993 was altered to include exemptions to specific properties in Dartmoor and the Isles of Scilly. It does not contain any such exemptions. It does not mention Dartmoor or Devon at all. It does mention the Isles of Scilly, but only to say that Part 1 of the Act (which is about landlords and tenants) applies to the Isles of Scilly. It gives the Secretary of State the power to modify the application of Part 1 to the Isles of Scilly, but the Secretary of State has not done so, so Part 1 applies in full.

They also claimed that the Heat Networks (Scotland) Act 2021 was amended to exempt the Queen's private estates from compulsory purchase, whereas the amendment to which they refer had the reverse effect - it enabled compulsory purchase of the Queen's private estates. Without the modification, no compulsory purchase would have been possible.

Thank you @prh47bridge. I am always grateful when one of our legal posters clarifies facts on threads.

Regarding King's / Prince's consent, the government guidance is here (I have linked to it before.
It is clear from the guidance that this is simply a matter of House procedure (7.13) and it is simply consent for Parliament to debate the bill (irrelevant of the contents of the bill) (7.12).
King's Prince's consent

I do not view that as a damp squib - Charles has tried to get his beliefs into parliamentary business - he tried to get homeopathy onto the NHS for example. Thank goodness most politicians have more sense than to listen to him. But it blew up the ‘politically neutral ‘ line .

Agreed.

No damp squib there and the government spent £400k in an attempt to protect C's reputation.

We also ended up with an amendment to FOI to exempt communications between both the monarch and heir with ministers.

We will never be able to find out how politically neutral or not our HoS really is.

You have repeatedly mentioned that the Guardian made errors in that article.
That is not the same as saying that it is not true that the Windsors exclude themselves from 100s of laws.

I’ll ask again - are you stating that the Windsors have NOT excluded themselves from 100s of laws ?

@bluegreygreen

What has the fact that Windsors excluding themselves from laws is ‘parliamentary procedure’ got to do with the point here ?

We know it’s procedure.

In fact it’s not a law it’s a convention.

It can and should be stopped tomorrow.
Kings assent , kings consent and the red boxed pantomime can all be stopped .

Look at the Japanese monarchy. Older than ours I believe . And the post WW2 reforms meant the monarch has zero influence and political power. Zero.

We need to wake up and catch up with the rest of the democratic nations .

Andrew Lownie stated that government departments are doing "anything to avoid" sharing information about Prince Andrew's past trade envoy role and business dealings, comparing the process to "whack-a-mole".

He said the reasons he was given for denial changed virtually every time he re-applied!

Lownie said that Whitehall departments used a long list of different FOI exemptions to block access, including vague references to "national security" or responding that they can "neither confirm nor deny" holding the records.

And Lownie submitted more than a hundred (up to several hundred) FOI requests to various Whitehall departments while researching Entitled.

The Foreign Office stated files relating to Prince Andrew's 10 or eleven year stint as a trade and industry envoy won't be released until 2065; meaning they will not be public in his lifetime unless he reaches 105!

And it’s not just Lownie protesting; see article below. Several academics have been objecting to the fact that documents relating to AMW’s time as a trade envoy which were once accessible to the public, have now been removed from public record retrospectively!

If that is not evidence of a cover up, I don’t know what is!

“Dr Alison McClean, a researcher at the Centre for Academic Language and Development at Bristol University, is one of a number of academics who have been warning that files once open to the public for years are being reclosed. Her expertise is in court and crime records but she has also found papers relating to the royal family, including the prince’s Royal Navy training, have been reclosed.”

“This is a rather dubious process, in that the National Archives relies on retrospective application of the exemptions to the FoI Act to justify these reclosures,” she said. She believes the National Archives had ignored parliament’s intention for the law to allow journalists and academic researchers to override exemptions. “It’s all internal at the National Archives. There’s no external scrutiny. I don’t think it would withstand a judicial review.”

Lownie did previously go through the courts to sue over denied FOI requests when he wrote his Mountbatten biography and that cost him £500,000 and he had to re-mortgage his house and crowd fund the cost!
He probably can’t take that financial risk now he is older. And it shouldn’t be necessary to sue when the records are very much in the public interest.

How can anyone argue seriously that it is not in the public interest to view records relating to a member of the RF, supported financially by the tax payer, allegedly committed crimes while in an official role representing UK business as a TE, and profited personally from it and endangered the interests and security of the UK in the process?

Edited to include forgotten article link here:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/dec/28/dubious-use-of-the-freedom-of-information-act-stopping-access-to-files-on-prince-andrew-researchers-say

It's what royal supporters and the palace always do. It's denial based on specific technical details.
So yes the monarch and heir get advance notice of legislation and the monarch meets every week with the prime minister, but we will pretend they lobby the government in the same way you and I can.

We know Charles is not politically neutral. Neither is William.

Thank you So we all see it, right ?

I was reading Diary of an MP’s wife by Sasha Swire over the weekend and it’s quite surprising the political views some members of the RF express when they think they are among friends.

Just looking at that. Yes Prince Edward was overwhelmed with relief when the conservatives were voted in 2010.

I still remember queen Elizabeth saying she was against Scottish independence. Politically neutral, is a lie

You mean you remember David Cameron’s massive indiscretions that may well be a steaming pile of horseshit anyway?