The Duke of Sussex is in court in London to appeal against a decision to downgrade the level of security he receives when he is in the UK.
Prince Harry is taking his case to the Court of Appeal, after the High Court upheld the decision that he should not be provided with the same level of police protection given to working members of the Royal Family.
Opening the latest hearing, his barrister Shaheed Fatima KC said Prince Harry had been “singled out for different, unjustified and inferior treatment”.
Prince Harry’s security in the UK is currently decided on a case-by-case basis, the same way as the country’s other high-profile visitors.
Once proceedings started, the prince sat with a notepad and pen in the back row of the court, next to his solicitor and behind his barristers.
He is not expected to give evidence, just to follow proceedings during the hearing, which is scheduled to last up to two days.
His lawyers had previously said that “the duke is not asking for preferential treatment”, arguing instead that there had been an unfairness in how decisions were made about his publicly-funded police protection.
But the judge ruled last year there had been no unlawfulness in the decision-making or anything that could be called irrational in the changes to Prince Harry’s security in February 2020.
The prince’s case is challenging the way the Royal and VIP Executive Committee, known as Ravec, took the decision.
Because the Home Office has legal responsibility for Ravec’s decisions, it is opposing the appeal on its behalf.
Ms Fatima told the court it was wrong for Ravec not to follow its standard procedures, because it did not have the expert analysis of the risks facing the prince.
In 2023, Prince Harry also lost a legal challenge in his bid to be allowed to make private payments for police protection.
