Caroline Davies : The Guardian : UK : Wednesday 15 September 2010 :
Prince Charles forfeited any constitutional right for his letters to government ministers to remain confidential when he surrendered his political neutrality, an information tribunal appeal heard today.
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| Disclosure of Prince Charles's letters to ministers would be 'strongly in the public interest', the hearing was told. Photograph: Chris Jackson/Getty |
The fact that he had "gone considerably out of his way deliberately to draw the public's attention to his political views", meant there was "no sound reason in constitutional convention as to why his political correspondence with ministers should remain confidential", said a leading expert.
Giving evidence in support of the Guardian's appeal over the government's refusal to release some of Charles's correspondence, Adam Tomkins, author and university professor on public law, said Charles had lost any protection because of his public pronouncements and "crusading".
Disclosure of the correspondence would be "strongly in the public interest", Tomkins said. It would "promote good governance, constitutional propriety and a more fully informed debate on constitutional matters", he told the Freedom of Information Act appeal tribunal.
The Guardian is seeking the release of letters written by Charles during an eight-month period between September 2004 and April 2005, involving the departments responsible for business, the environment, health, schools, culture, Northern Ireland and the Cabinet Office. The Guardian argues they should be released so the public can see how much Charles seeks to influence government policy.
The government departments and information commissioner have refused on the grounds that such correspondence remains private under "constitutional convention" which allows the heir to the throne to be educated in the business of government to prepare him for kinghood. Any disclosures would undermine the perception of political neutrality fundamental to him being sovereign, they claim.
Tomkins, legal adviser to the House of Lords select committee on the constitution, but giving evidence in a personal capacity, said convention protected the Queen's confidentiality, but "the Prince of Wales has very regrettably failed to comply with the requirement that the monarchy be politically neutral".
"The matters of public policy on which the prince has gone public include: the perceived merits of holistic medicine, the perceived evils of genetically modified crops, the apparent dangers of making cuts in the armed forces, his strong dislike of certain forms of modern architecture (leading him to make high-profile interventions in a number of contested planning developments), a range of issues relating to agricultural policy, as well as other matters," he said in evidence.
"The purpose of the confidentiality is not to create an appearance of political neutrality; rather it is to preserve the reality of political neutrality. You cannot preserve the reality of something that does not exist.
"If that political neutrality has already been surrendered, as is clearly (if regrettably) the case with regard to the Prince of Wales, the 'good constitutional reason' for the rule disappears. In the case of the Prince of Wales therefore – wholly unlike in the case of the Queen – there can be no grounds in constitutional convention for insisting that his correspondence with ministers must remain confidential."
Charles's practice of writing regularly to ministers was an "innovation", "something he has assumed rather than inherited".
Jonathan Dimbleby's biography, which the prince sanctioned, authorised and for which he allowed access to documents including his private letters, did not remotely impart the sense that Charles was seeking to educate himself in the business of government, Tomkins said.
"Rather, one is strongly encouraged by the author to believe the prince enters into such correspondence because he is seeking to raise or pursue matters which concern him personally."
Rodney Brazier, professor of constitutional law at Manchester University, told the hearing the prince had a constitutional right to be instructed in and about the business of government.
Calling it an "apprenticeship convention", he said it prepared the prince to fulfil his duty when king under the "tripartite convention", which requires the monarch to "counsel, to encourage and to warn" the government.
Part of that apprenticeship allows him to see a range of official papers, and had an "obligation of confidentiality". It was imperative, to maintain political neutrality, that communications between him and ministers were confidential otherwise his "access to information would be compromised", Brazier said.
"The Queen acceded to the throne in 1952 aged only 25. She had not then uttered a word in public or published anything in writing," he told the hearing. Charles would be "at least 61" at his accession, he said.
Questioned whether the prince was "politically neutral", he agreed that some of Charles's "several public interventions" could be categorised as "political" by some. But, he added: "In the main such matters do not divide political parties, and so are not party political."
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