The BBC today admitted it failed to properly challenge Prince Harry’s claim he is the victim of ‘good old fashioned establishment stitch up’, calling it a lapse in ‘our usual high editorial standards’.
The Duke of Sussex‘s also spoke of a ‘pretty dark’ conspiracy theory where he appeared to suggest shadowy figures want him dead in the bombshell interview given after he lost his London legal challenge on Friday.
A row has broken out over the BBC’s coverage of the Duke of Sussex’s interview with the broadcaster, where he blamed a ‘stitch-up’.
‘We failed to properly challenge this and other allegations,’ the BBC said on its Corrections and Clarifications website today.
Harry spoke to BBC News for 31 minutes on Friday after losing a Court of Appeal challenge over his security arrangements while in the UK.
This prompted the prince to hit out at what he claimed was an ‘Establishment stitch-up’, including Buckingham Palace.
Senior judges upheld two previous decisions that the Executive Committee for the Protection of Royalty and Public Figures, known as Ravec, had acted lawfully in offering him a special ‘bespoke’ security package, leaving Harry with an estimated £1.5million legal bill.
On Saturday, BBC Radio 4’s Today programme covered the duke describing his court defeat as a ‘good old-fashioned establishment stitch-up’. And there was then an interview with close protection expert Richard Aitch, where Harry’s ‘stitch-up’ claims were ‘repeated’, the broadcaster said.
‘This case is ultimately the responsibility of the Home Office and we should have reflected their statement’, the BBC said today.
Prince Harry said on Friday night after his court defeat: “I have had it described to me, once people knew about the facts, that this is a good old-fashioned establishment stitch-up, and that is what it feels like.”
The BBC has had to post a clarification over its coverage, admitting it failed to properly challenge some of his claims
The corporation also said the programme ‘should have given the view of Buckingham Palace’, and ‘this was a lapse in our usual high editorial standards’.
The Home Office said: ‘We are pleased that the court has found in favour of the Government’s position in this case.
‘The UK Government’s protective security system is rigorous and proportionate. It is our long-standing policy not to provide detailed information on those arrangements, as doing so could compromise their integrity and affect individuals’ security.’
In response to the failed legal challenge, a Buckingham Palace spokesperson said: ‘All of these issues have been examined repeatedly and meticulously by the courts, with the same conclusion reached on each occasion.’
During the Today interview, Mr Aitch, who is director of operations at security services company Mobius International, said he ‘was shocked but certainly not surprised’ at the judgment.
He claimed that the ‘provision of protection should not be based on legal argument’, but on assessment of ‘risk and threat against Harry’, and agreed that it had been ‘a ‘stitch-up’.
Posting on X after the BBC clarification, Mr Aitch said: ‘There should not be any need to apologise @BBCNews for opinion based interviews.
‘Absence of a threat and risk assessment on Prince Harry where the focus is on legal process influenced by the recommendations of a committee that is not independent, it defines “stitch up”.’
The clarification on the BBC website over its Prince Harry coverage
Meghan posted a photo in an apparent show of support for Harry in the aftermath of his bombshell interview
Harry’s interview continues to cause a major stir.
At one point he was asked about his mother’s death
‘How does that make you feel, given you have expressed numerous times that you do not want history to repeat itself?’, the interviewer asked.
Harry then replied: ‘Yes, I don’t want history to repeat itself. I think there’s a lot of other people out there, the majority, that also don’t want history to repeat itself. But through the disclosure process, I’ve discovered that some people do want history to repeat itself, which is pretty dark.’
He went on: ‘I’m not going to share that at this point. I know all the names of the people that were involved in this process’.
Ken Wharfe, who was a royal protection officer to royals including Harry, William and their mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, believes the duke has ‘played the wrong card’ regarding his security.
Harry cannot expect the ‘all-singing-and-dancing protection that you had when you were in the United Kingdom’ and was a working member of the royal family, like his father, the King, and his brother, the Prince of Wales, according to Mr Wharfe.
He now needs to show some ‘humility’ if he wants to begin talks with his UK family, along with the government and police, to try and improve his security.
Harry told the BBC that he wanted reconciliation with his family but hinted that he may not be willing to bring his wife and children to the UK without better security
Harry has called for the Home Secretary to review the body that authorises protection for senior royals after he lost a Court of Appeal challenge over his security arrangements while in the UK.
It prompted him to tell the BBC in an interview that he ‘can’t see a world in which I would be bringing my wife and children back to the UK’.
Mr Wharfe said: ‘On the security issue, I think he has really played the wrong card.
‘I don’t see how he can expect to get full protection when he arrived back in the UK, when he is no longer a member working the royal family, when he knows that the actual security package comes at the expense of the British taxpayer.
‘The government and the police are quite together on this.
‘They are saying, “well, we understand that, but we can’t suddenly just push on buttons to give you the all-singing-and-dancing protection that you had when you were in United Kingdom,” the same that his mother had, his brother enjoys, and now it is, of course, his father and Queen Camilla.
‘What the government has given and the police is a protection of sorts to guarantee his safety, which will be based on risk assessment that, quite frankly, is about the best he can expect.
‘The High Court has seen that. The appeal court has seen it. The government has seen it. The police have seen it – so where’s the problem?’
‘Entitled’ Prince Harry chose to walk away from public duty and his continuing demands for round-the-clock police protection should not be entertained further, the shadow Home Secretary said last night.
It comes as his wife, Meghan, pointedly posted a photograph of Harry with his two children in the garden of their California home, just hours after the prince said his ‘devastating’ loss in the Court of Appeal meant that his family could never return to the UK.
MP Chris Philp told the Mail last night that the government ‘has more pressing concerns’ than to cave in to the prince’s demands that Home Secretary Yvette Cooper now investigate his case and Ravec.
