The British government is refusing to release documents about Prince Andrew’s past role as a trade envoy in the Middle East, it has emerged.
Best-selling author Andrew Lownie, who is currently writing a biography of the disgraced royal, has reported difficulties accessing files on the Duke of York.
He has however obtained the Ministry of Defence’s “Blue Guide”, which instructs censors what topics should be blocked from freedom of information requests.
It reveals that Saudi Arabia is singled out for special treatment, protecting it from having to reveal information about Britain’s largest arms market.
Prince Andrew visited the Gulf kingdom six times when he was the UK’s Special Representative for International Trade and Investment for ten years until July 2011.
Under a heading, “Arabian Peninsula and Gulf Sensitivity Issues” the MoD’s Blue Guide warns reviewers to “note that in most Gulf countries the rulers, members of their family and many senior officials have been in office for a considerable period of time.”
In a passage about “international sensitivity” the guidance refers to “specific concerns relating to Arabian Peninsula and Gulf countries, particularly Saudi Arabia, and COCOM records”.
COCOM is believed to refer to a Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls.
The guidance adds: “General sensitivity concerns also apply to Arabian Peninsula and Gulf countries.”
The guide then refers to “examples of potential international sensitivity”. They are all redacted.
The latest version of the guide is dated August last year and was released to Lownie last month.
Strangely, while the MoD agreed to give Lownie its Blue Guide, albeit with extensive redactions, the Foreign Office and Cabinet Office declined to handover their equivalent manuals.
Rejected
Lownie’s freedom of information requests for specific details about Prince Andrew have been rejected by all three Whitehall departments he has approached.
The Foreign Office told him they cannot provide him with information relating to the prince’s visits to Egypt, the UAE, Kuwait, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, partly on grounds of cost.
Another request for information on the prince’s visit to Saudi Arabia in 2011 was rejected specifically on the grounds it would cost the department too much to gather the information.
Lownie has been told he cannot see files with government departments directing him to a long list of exemptions under the Freedom of Information Act, including unexplained references to “national security” or – using a term normally applied to the intelligence agencies – that the departments can “neither confirm nor deny” they have the information he has asked for.
Defence minister Lord Coaker told peers last month that an MoD review of “areas that could have been involved” in Andrew’s role as trade envoy “has not produced records of briefings to the prince after he left the navy”.
Lownie says he does not believe that. He has also questioned a response by the Foreign Office that they hold no files on the prince.
Lownie, author of much praised biographies of Guy Burgess, the Mountbattens, and “The Traitor King” ( Edward VIII), is a tenacious opponent of official secrecy.
He told Declassified: “Over the last four years I have made over a hundred FOI (Freedom of Information) requests…without eliciting any information on Prince Andrew’s decade as a taxpayer-funded Special Trade Representative.
“Every possible exemption has been deployed to avoid releasing papers, which by law many of which should by now be in the National Archives.”
He says a “Royal Register” should be set up containing information about the business interests of the royal family and how they spend taxpayers’’ money.
‘Potentially controversial’
The MoD’s guide also refers to an embargo on records covering the Polaris Sales Agreement “or information derived from it”. Polaris was the American predecessor to the Trident nuclear missile system.
The agreement, signed in 1963 by the then prime minister, Harold Macmillan, sets out the terms and conditions under which the missiles were provided to Britain.
Another section covers what is described as “sensitive” information, referring to the navy’s submarines.
The Blue Guide states: “Since WW2 Royal Navy submarines, both nuclear and conventional, have been engaged in a series of operations in both European and more distant waters”.
It continues: “These operations have been wide and varied in nature, from carrying the national nuclear deterrent to special reconnaissance tasks in highly sensitive waters to fighting a maritime campaign thousands of miles from a home port.
“No other nation’s submarines have had such post WW2 operational experience and, consequently, the opportunity to develop tried and effective operating procedures.”
The MoD’s guide stresses that “the release of historical information about the deployment and operating procedures of UK submarines may be useful to a hostile power in so much that it shows how the Royal Navy has used such vessels in the past and may seek to use such vessels in the future.”
After referring to one heavily redacted passage, the guide states: “No other elements of the British armed forces have been used in such potentially controversial (in both a military and diplomatic sense) operations, the impact of some of which will have ramifications for UK foreign and domestic politics for a long time to come.”
In a passage almost certainly referring to Britain’s special forces, the guide states: “[blacked out] operations in Iraq have been the subject of much media attention, together with numerous books written by [blacked out]. Despite this, there has been very little official confirmation of their deployments and this should continue”.