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A Green MP is leading a bid to end the UK’s culture of ‘royal secrecy’ through a bill which would give the public powers to scrutinise the work of the crown.
Siân Berry’s bill to amend the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act, introduced this Tuesday, would end the outright exemption for the King, the heir to the throne and the “wider royal family” from the 2000-era transparency law.
Berry wants to open up the royals to Freedom of Information requests – something almost every public body is subject to and which allows researchers, journalists and the public to ask for documents in the public interest.
Section 37 of the Freedom of Information Act means the Sovereign (i.e. King Charles) and the two nearest heirs to the Throne are totally exempt from Freedom of Information requests.
There is no ‘public interest test’ that can override this. The rule also covers all communications with them, sweeping up communications with ministers and officials, even if they relate to politics and public spending.
Communications with the wider royal family are also exempt from FoI, but are subject to a public interest test – so if there is an overriding public interest in releasing, for example, communications between a minister and Prince Harry, theoretically that information could be released. However, many researchers and historians frequently find that officials block these requests too.
After this article’s publication, a Government spokesperson told Byline Times: “The Government is not currently considering removing the exemption at section 37, or bringing the Royal Household into the scope of FOI Act.”
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Royal biographer Dr Andrew Lownie, whose recent book on Andrew, Entitled, exposed wide-ranging allegations of cronyism and misconduct, told Byline Times: “From my experience — and I’ve now used this over ten years on members of the Royal Family — that public interest test has never once come down in favour of disclosure.”
He has been told material on then-Prince Andrew’s role as a trade envoy won’t be released until 2065 – a timeframe he says has no basis in law. It would be 105 years after Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s birth.
That’s despite the then-Prince’s role being officially separate to royal titles, and was instead an official Government appointment.
The Foreign Office and the Department for Business and Trade have used a scattergun of exemptions, seen by Byline Times, to block requests on who accompanied Andrew on trade trips – including claiming it would harm law enforcement, national security, health and safety, and even describing Lownie’s efforts as “vexatious.”
A separate FoI fight with Southampton University and the Cabinet Office over Lord Mountbatten’s diaries in 2021 left the historian out of pocket by £500,000 in legal costs. He eventually won his battle, but believes many times his own costs in public money were spent fighting the requests.
Even when material is released on the royals it is often heavily censored. Lownie says of the Lord Mountbatten case: “They tried to redact every single mention of the Royal Family in those three thousand pages. Really innocent stuff — ‘Prince Philip came for tea,’ ‘Princess Elizabeth had her birthday party today’ — nothing remotely sensitive.”
“They were even redacting names that had already appeared in the published version of the diaries.”
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Brighton Pavilion MP Berry is now attempting to scrap some of the exemptions used to try and block the release.
Her bill – which stands little chance of succeeding without Government backing – would omit section 37 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000; to “provide that the sovereign, the Royal Family, the Royal Household, the Royal Archive and the Duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster” are treated like any Government department or quango when it comes to FoI requests. The Royal Archive is currently, officially, a “private collection” and and the Government claims it would not be in scope of Freedom of Information law.
In 2023, researchers from Index on Censorship surveyed 28 historians and journalists about their experience requesting archive materials on the royal family – much of which is publicly-funded.
It hinted at the extent to which the Palace holds sway over every archive in the UK.
One respondent, reportedly working for the Lambeth Palace Library archives, told the anti-censorship group they were instructed, at the Royal Archives’ request, not to provide documents from the 1940s–50s related to the royals when a researcher requested them.
And the non-profit group found that a 2023 policy change at the BBC required unseen royal-related BBC material to be vetted and sensitive content relating to the royals redacted before researchers could see it, apparently after a request from ‘Royal Liaison’. It suggested a direct channel of Palace influence over the national broadcaster’s own archive.
‘Archaic Rules’
Berry told Byline Times: “Throughout the whole Andrew [Mountbatten-Windsor] saga, there was a prohibition on criticising members of the royal family in Parliament, which then got relaxed by the Speaker just ahead of him being stripped of his royal status.
“Now he’s not royal, which is why I mentioned him several times in my speech. But these are archaic rules, and we do need to treat the royal family much more like a normal public body.”
When Berry learnt about the royals’ FoI exemption, she says she was “outraged that it existed.”
