Carol McGiffin asks why Prince Harry needs protection

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The Duke is suing The Mail on Sunday over what he deems as a defamatory exclusive which described how “Harry tried to keep his legal fight over bodyguards secret” then claimed minutes after The Mail on Sunday broke the story his “PR machine tried to put positive spin on the dispute”.

The royal’s lawyers said the story and “adverse and hostile” comments by readers were “self-evidently exceptionally serious and damaging” and constitute an “attack on his honesty and integrity” which “undermines his fitness to be involved both in charitable and philanthropic work”.

He is seeking damages of libel, an injunction preventing the paper from re-publishing defamatory statements, and publication of the High Court’s judgement.

The Duke has reportedly “suffered serious damage to his reputation and substantial hurt, embarrassment and distress which is continuing”, they say, in a High Court case seeking “aggravated damages” for the Duke.

The Mail of Sunday article is said to have inspired a “feeding frenzy of hostile comments” aimed at the Duke, his lawyers claim.

The newspaper first revealed Harry was seeking judicial review of the Home Office after the decision was made not to provide police protection for him and his family when visiting the UK.

Shortly after the article was published on January 16, the Duke’s team sent out a statement confirming the Duke was seeking judicial review.

The statement noted: “The Duke first offered to pay personally for UK police protection for himself and his family in January of 2020 at Sandringham.”

However, during the case’s first hearing, lawyers for the Government allegedly said the offer of payment “was notably not advanced to Ravec [the Executive Committee for the Protection of Royalty and Public Figures]” when the Duke visited the UK in June 2021 or in any of the immediate correspondence which followed.

The next week, The Mail on Sunday published another article stating “the revelations are a crushing rebuttal to Harry’s initial public statement that implied he had always been willing to foot the bill.

But Harry’s lawyers claim the comments by the Government’s lawyers were “no rebuttal at all to the Claimant’s public statement, let alone a ‘crushing’ one”.

They say it only refers to his dealings with Ravec but not offers of payment for protection made to other outside parties.

The Duke’s lawyers said he “has been upset (but sadly unsurprised) by the defendant’s distortion and misrepresentation of the facts in breach of the most basic journalistic standards and ethics”.

His attorneys particularly object to the claim he tried to keep the case a secret, and the notion he “improperly and cynically tried to manipulate and confuse public opinion by authorising his ‘spin doctors’ to put out false and misleading statements about his willingness to pay for police protection”.

They also object to the “numerous gratuitous photographs of the claimant and his wife and family” as well as the word exclusive being used to promote the story.

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Readers were given the opportunity to “share what you think”, which they say gained over 6,460 comments with the majority being “adverse and hostile”.

As well as causing the Duke stress and emotional upset, his lawyers claim it also undermines charitable and philanthropic work, particularly his efforts to tackle online misinformation.

The legal documents reportedly state: “It must have been plain to the [Mail on Sunday] that by giving these serious allegations such huge publicity in the terms and manner that it did, leading to inevitable repetition and the feeding frenzy of hostile comments, it could not but cause [Prince Harry’s] reputation substantial damage and cause considerable distress and hurt to the [Duke’s] feelings, as has been the case.”

The Mail on Sunday, in response, reportedly accused Prince Harry of “chill[ing] further discussion” and issuing proceedings for his own “media management purposes”, “as part of his continuing self-declared battle with anyone in the media who dares to publish anything about him which is less than flattering”.

Associated Newspapers Limited – the company that publishes The Mail on Sunday – is defending the claim.

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