Prince Harry asks Home Secretary for more security

Prince Harry asked the Home Secretary for increased security before an obsessed stalker was found ‘within feet’ of him on two occasions during his latest visit to the UK. The Duke of Sussex , 41, wrote to Shabana Mahmood shortly after her appointment and submitted a formal request to the Executive Committee for the Protection of Royalty and Public Figures, a source close to him said.

A female stalker entered a ‘secure zone’ at the Royal Lancaster Hotel in west London when the prince was attending the WellChild Awards on September 9. She was reportedly found hiding in a hotel toilet ‘mumbling odd comments’ about the Duke just 20 minutes before he arrived at a charity event. She was allegedly pictured next to his car after she was thrown out.

Just two days later she was seen near the prince at the Centre for Blast Injury Studies. The woman is believed to have followed Harry around the globe, including during his three day trip with the Duchess of Sussex to Nigeria in May 2024.

The prince’s letter, which was sent before the two incidents last month, came after he lost an appeal against the Home Office over the stripping of his taxpayer-funded police protection in February 2020, following Megxit. Despite moving to the US and stepping back from royal public engagements, the Duke said the decision, made after a two-day hearing at the Court of Appeal in April, was ‘difficult to swallow’.

Following the appeal, he said he ‘can’t see a world in which I would be bringing my wife and children back to the UK’. The 41-year-old urged Keir Starmer to intervene and warned that the royal family’s power over security means it ‘can be used to control’ family members.

He also said he would ask then-home secretary Yvette Cooper to ‘look at this very, very carefully’. In a summary of the ruling, judge Sir Geoffrey Vos said the decision was ‘understandable and perhaps predictable’.

While the Court of Appeal upheld the High Court’s decision, the Metropolitan Police voluntarily provided personal security to the Prince during his visit last month, sources told the Mail. It is understood that senior Met officers ‘acted on their own initiative’ to offer him protection while he was in the capital for the WellChild Awards.

The Duke is a patron of the charity, which supports seriously ill children and their carers. Sources say officers contacted Harry’s representatives ahead of his arrival for the high-profile ceremony on September 8 to offer him protection for that day.

The Met’s decision was made without the involvement of either the Home Office or the Royal Family and was instead based on the highly publicized nature of the event and the fact that many children would be present. But the Duke, who made the trip from his home in Montecito, California, where he lives with his wife Meghan and children Archie, six, and Lilibet, four, was only given protection for the day of the event – and was said to have felt ‘abandoned’ after having to fund his own security for the remainder of his visit.

A friend of Harry said the Duke was acutely conscious that his status put those around him in danger, something over which he felt ‘enormous guilt’. Harry, who alongside Meghan was crowned ‘Humanitarians of The Year’ at a glitzy gala run by the Project Healthy Minds charity in New York on Friday, has previously claimed he was ‘singled out’ for ‘inferior treatment after losing his security clearance.

Multiple people have been handed jail time for either plotting to kill Harry or making threats against him. A Government spokesperson said: ‘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.’