Thames Valley accepts the Andrew search warrants were unlawful

Thames Valley Police has accepted that the search warrants used on Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor's homes were unlawful. The High Court heard the admission on Thursday. The force said the court that issued the warrants under the statute it chose was wrong, and that the warrants must be quashed. The misconduct investigation that produced the searches is still open.

Officers searched the former prince's properties on 19 February. The homes are in Norfolk and Berkshire. His arrest the same month followed the release, by the US Department of Justice, of documents that suggested he had forwarded confidential information to Jeffrey Epstein in 2010, when Mountbatten-Windsor was a UK trade envoy. His lawyers brought a judicial review against the chief constable and against the Central Criminal Court, which had granted the warrants.

The legal error is specific. The warrants were issued under section 8 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. Police now accept they should have been sought under section 9. Section 8 is the ordinary warrant for premises, available when a magistrate is satisfied there are reasonable grounds for believing an indictable offence has been committed and that material on the premises is likely to be of substantial value. Section 9 is the route for material that is legally privileged, excluded or special procedure material, and it runs through a different application, usually to a circuit judge, with notice in many cases. The force told the court that the judge who granted the warrants could not have been sure the section 8 route was available.

A Thames Valley spokesperson drew a line between the warrants and the investigation. The agreement that led to the quashing, the force said, relates to a decision by the court on the legal basis for the warrants and is not a judgement on the inquiry. The force said it had put the necessary information and paperwork before the court and had followed the correct processes. It accepted that the initial decision to issue warrants under the statute used was incorrect, and that the warrants must be legally quashed.

The practical fight is over what was taken. Officers seized documents and electronic devices. Thames Valley said legal proceedings are under way to decide how that material will be managed and whether it can lawfully be kept for the investigation. A quashed warrant does not, by itself, answer that question. Material taken under a warrant later found to be bad can be ordered returned, or a court can allow retention if another lawful basis is shown. That second case is the one now open.

The investigation itself is described in the force's own words as an inquiry into alleged misconduct in public office by a man in his 60s from Norfolk. Misconduct in public office is a common-law offence aimed at a public officer who wilfully neglects or misconducts himself in a way that abuses the public's trust, without reasonable excuse. The 2010 trade-envoy role is the public office in the documents that prompted the arrest. The force said it is still pursuing lines of enquiry.

Mountbatten-Windsor is no longer a prince in the style he held for most of his adult life. The searches in February were the first time police entered his homes in this inquiry. Thursday's hearing does not clear him and does not end the case. It removes the legal footing of the February warrants and opens a separate argument about the files and devices already in police hands.

What Thursday settled is the statute. Section 8 was the wrong door. Section 9 was the one police now say they needed. What Thursday did not settle is whether the seized material stays with the investigation, or goes back.