The Duke of Sussex has lost a legal appeal demanding the right to pay for his police protection while in the United Kingdom, according to the High Court of London.

The duke was contesting the decision to remove his police protection after he retired as a working royal.

The judge, Mr Justice Chamberlain, refused the duke's legal appeal on Tuesday to revisit the decision not to enable him to pay for police protection with his own money.

A separate legal attempt is underway to review the original decision to remove him from taxpayer-funded Protection.

The UK Home Office argued in written submissions to the High Court that the Executive Committee for the Protection of Royalty and Public Figures (RAVEC) "considered that it was not appropriate to support an outcome in which wealthy individuals could 'buy' Protective Security from specialist law enforcement personnel (conceivably including equipped officers), in situations where RAVEC has decided that the public interest does not require that individual receiving such Protection."


Mr Justice Chamberlain stated that a judicial review of this claim has now been denied.

This is one of the numerous ongoing legal cases involving Prince Harry in the United Kingdom.

He is scheduled to return to London next month to testify in a separate trial involving pho

ne-hacking charges against the Mirror Newspaper Group (MNG), which will start on May 10 and last seven weeks.

At the opening of the court case, the UK tabloid publisher apologized to the Duke of Sussex for using illegal techniques to collect information about his personal life.

He and three other plaintiffs representing scores of celebrities are suing MNG, accusing its titles of getting private information between 1991 and 2011 by phone hacking and other illegal techniques, including private investigators.


Mirror Group Newspapers is challenging most of the charges, claiming in court filings that some claims were filed too late and that there is insufficient evidence of phone hacking in all four cases.

The action against the newspaper publisher is one of several filed by Harry and his wife, Meghan, in their long-running battle with British tabloids, whom they accuse of violating their privacy and publishing fake articles.

The verdict comes only days after Prince Harry and his wife Meghan were involved in a car pursuit with paparazzi in New York last week, which their spokeswoman claimed could have resulted in a "catastrophic" event.

Photographers followed the Sussexes after leaving the Women of Vision Awards at the city's Ziegfeld Ballroom in a convoy that included Meghan's mother, Doria Ragland.

The incident frightened the newlyweds, but no one was wounded, according to their security detail.

The Duke of Sussex has been vociferous about his family's safety, frequently drawing parallels between his wife's behaviour and that of his mother, Diana.

The late Princess of Wales died in 1997 due to internal injuries sustained in a high-speed vehicle accident in Paris.