High Court hears that the warrants used on Andrew's homes were unlawful

Thames Valley Police has accepted that the warrants it used to search Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor's homes, on the day of his arrest in February, were unlawful. Mr Justice Hilliard recorded that acceptance at the High Court on Thursday. The former prince and the force agree the warrants should not have been issued in the form they were. The investigation itself does not stop.

The defect is statutory, not a finding that nothing was there. Police applied under section 8 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act. A later challenge established that the court should have issued the warrants under section 9. Section 8 is the ordinary warrant for material on a premises when an officer has reasonable grounds. Section 9 is the route for excluded material and special procedure material, the category that covers journalistic and personal records and that requires a higher application, to a circuit judge, with the occupier sometimes heard. The issuing court treated section 8 as enough. It was not. The force told the High Court that the initial decision to issue the warrants under the specific piece of legislation used was incorrect.

Hilliard drew the line the police wanted drawn. Quashing the warrants, he said, does not bring the investigation to an end and does not make the whole of the investigation unlawful. Items seized in the raids remain with the police. Mountbatten-Windsor opposes that retention. A further hearing, expected in 2027, will decide whether the material can be used as evidence. Between now and then the files sit in police hands, lawfully held for the moment by the judge's interim ruling, and barred from the trial bundle until that later decision.

The searches were at his homes, including Royal Lodge in Windsor, and they coincided with the arrest. The underlying allegation has not been re-tried in Thursday's hearing. Thursday was about the paper that let officers through the door. British law is strict on that paper because a search is an intrusion the statute authorises only in a set form. Evidence taken under a bad warrant is not automatically worthless, and it is not automatically usable. The 2027 hearing is the argument over which of those it is.

For Mountbatten-Windsor the practical gain is limited and real. He has a court record that the entry was unlawful. He does not have his property back. He does not have a stopped investigation. Hilliard said as much in open court, which closes the reading that a quashed warrant equals an acquittal. The king's brother remains a suspect in a misconduct inquiry whose next evidential ruling is more than a year away.

The naming matters for the record. He is Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the style he carries after the titles were removed. Court papers use that name. The warrants used it. The error the police have now admitted was not a misnaming. It was a choice of section, made in the application and repeated by the court that granted it. That choice is what Thursday undid.

Anyone watching the case for a charge, a plea or a trial date did not get one. They got a timetable. Police keep the material. The defence will argue in 2027 that material taken under a bad warrant cannot be used. If the judge then excludes it, the investigation has to stand on whatever was obtained by other means. If the judge admits it, the section 9 error becomes a footnote to a case that proceeds on the seized files. Thursday settled only the first of those questions.