On Tuesday, Prince Harry lost a legal challenge to be able to pay for police protection while in the UK. The decision was made by the High Court of London, the BBC reports.

Prince Harry’s appeal was a legitimate attempt to maintain the police protection normally given to the royal family and public figures after he stepped down from his duties as an active member of the royal family, news.ro said.

His lawyers sought a judicial review of the rejection of his offer to pay for police protection in the UK after security measures changed when the prince ceased to be an “active member of the royal family”.

Home Office lawyers objected to the idea of ​​allowing rich people to “buy” police protection, and a judge ruled in their favor and decided to dismiss Harry’s application.

The decision came after a one-day hearing in a London court last week. Since then, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have been involved in what their spokesperson described as a “near-catastrophic” car chase involving paparazzi in New York.

• – This is an exaggeration. Prince Harry and Meghan’s “near-catastrophic chase” around New York was seen from a cab

Prince Harry filed several lawsuits

This case, however, is only one of many lawsuits that Prince Harry has filed in the UK.

He is expected to return to London next month to give evidence in a separate trial accusing the Mirror Newspaper Group (MNG) of illegal wiretapping. The trial began on May 10 and is expected to last seven weeks.

When Prince Harry gave up his ‘royal’ status in 2020, it meant he no longer had access to the previous level of security.

However, Prince Harry took issue with the way the decision was made by the Executive Committee for the Protection of Royalty and Public Figures, known as Ravec, which deals with the security of high-profile individuals, including senior members of the royal family.

Arguments of the British authorities

“Ravek exceeded his authority, his prerogative, because he does not have the authority to make this decision in the first place,” Prince Harry’s lawyers told the court.

They argued that there were provisions in the legislation to allow payment for “special policing services” and as such “payment for police services is not incompatible with the public interest or public confidence in the Metropolitan Police”.

But Home Office lawyers say the appropriate type of protection, which could mean “specialist officers as bodyguards”, is not the same as funding the provision of extra police services, for example for football matches.

A lawyer for the Metropolitan Police argued that it would be unwise for police officers to put themselves at risk because of “a private person’s payment of a fee”.