A significant new legal ruling by the United Kingdom Supreme Court has allowed the disclosure of a set of 27 letters written by Prince Charles to various government departments in 2004 and 2005.
This is the culmination of a campaign by The Guardian , which had requested the letters 10 years ago in a Freedom of Information request. In 2012, the then attorney general Dominic Grieve had withheld the letters on the grounds that their contents would undermine the British heir apparent’s position of strict political neutrality.
Five of the seven judges in the court ruled in favour of The Guardian and held it unlawful on the part of Mr. Grieve to disregard the decision of a freedom of information tribunal that the letters be published.
The Prince of Wales is known to have strong views on public issues and is believed to have overstepped his constitutional reach in the letters to government ministries.
The publication of the black spider memos (a reference to the spidery handwriting of the Prince of Wales) to the then Labour government “would be seriously damaging to his role as future monarch because if he forfeits his position of political neutrality as heir to the throne, he cannot easily recover it when he is King”, Mr. Grieve said.
Clarence House, the official residence of the Prince of Wales said that the matter was with the government, adding: “Clarence House is disappointed the principle of privacy has not been upheld.”
“The Prime Minister has been very clear this morning it is a deeply disappointing judgment,” a spokesperson for Downing Street told The Guardian . “He thinks what’s at stake here is an important principle about the ability of senior members of the royal family to express their views to government confidentially.”
There is the possibility that the government would make redactions before releasing the correspondence. The anti-monarchy organization Republic welcomed the ruling of the court. Its chief executive officer Graham Smith said: “The government must now act to end royal secrecy. Any risk to the monarchy must pale against a risk to democracy from having an activist prince acting in secret.”
