Thames Valley Police has accepted that the warrants it used to search two homes of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor in February were unlawful, and is asking the High Court to let it keep what it seized.

Mr Justice Hilliard said on 8 October that the force and Mountbatten-Windsor had agreed the warrants, issued by a judge at the Central Criminal Court on 18 February, were unlawful. Officers took documents and electronic devices from Wood Farm on the Sandringham estate and from Royal Lodge in Windsor the next day.

Mountbatten-Windsor opposes the police application to keep that material, which will be heard in private in 2027. If it fails, the seized property goes back to him.

Mountbatten-Windsor, 66, has denied any wrongdoing in relation to Jeffrey Epstein and has made no public comment since his arrest, according to Reuters. Thames Valley Police said "the specific piece of legislation used was incorrect" and that its investigation into alleged misconduct in public office continues.

Hilliard wrote that a single breach, of the condition in section 8(1)(d) of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE), was enough to make the warrants, the searches and the seizures unlawful. The quashing does not end the investigation, he said.

The application and the grant

Section 8 of PACE lets a judge issue a search warrant only if satisfied there are reasonable grounds to believe the material sought does not include legally privileged items or special procedure material. Special procedure material covers confidential material that someone acquired or created through their work or through a paid or unpaid office.

Thames Valley Police's own application expressly envisaged that privileged material would be found, according to Hilliard's reasons. The nature of an investigation into misconduct in public office also made it likely that Mountbatten-Windsor held special procedure material, he wrote.

Thames Valley Police conceded the point shortly after Mountbatten-Windsor issued his claim for judicial review on 18 May. Both sides now agree a lawful warrant could only have come under section 9 of and Schedule 1 to PACE, the route Parliament built for confidential material, which requires a judge to rule on a separate set of access conditions.

The Old Bailey judge thought section 8 warrants were appropriate and so made no decision on the Schedule 1 conditions, Hilliard wrote. The reasons describe the issuing judge only as a judge at the Central Criminal Court.

Hilliard wrote that "a significant error" was made in both the application for the warrants and their grant. He did not divide responsibility between the force and the court, and Thames Valley Police made no admissions on the four other grounds of Mountbatten-Windsor's claim, which were never argued.

Clare Montgomery KC and James Stansfeld of Matrix Chambers, instructed by Blackfords, acted for Mountbatten-Windsor; Alan Payne KC and John Goss also appear on the order. The chambers said on 9 October that the warrants were "quashed by consent" after proceedings were issued.

Nick Vamos, a criminal lawyer, told ABC News in Australia that the police error was embarrassing and that the case "should have gone under so many noses before it went to court".

Thames Valley Police said on 8 October that the warrants must be legally quashed and that it would continue to pursue all reasonable lines of enquiry. The Crown Prosecution Service confirmed in April that it was giving the force early investigative advice, according to a report carried by Australian Community Media.

Retention under section 59

Thames Valley Police applied on 4 June under section 59 of the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001. Section 59 lets a judge authorise police to keep unlawfully seized property where it would be lawful to seize it again under another power once returned.

Hilliard reasoned that there would be little point in handing property back if police could immediately seize it again lawfully. He will decide the application himself, in private, on the parties' agreed footing that only Schedule 1 could have authorised the searches; the hearing will not be ready before 2027.

HMRC used the same power in Panesar, where its search warrants were quashed and the Central Criminal Court then accepted jurisdiction to authorise it to keep the material, a ruling the Divisional Court upheld in 2014.

Mark Stephens, a media lawyer not involved in the case, told the Associated Press that English law has no automatic rule excluding the products of an unlawful warrant, and that later hearings will weigh what is excluded.

Sean Caulfield of Hodge Jones and Allen told PA that the Crown Prosecution Service is unlikely to make a charging decision until the retention dispute is resolved.

Bid to delay publication

Thames Valley Police first asked the court to delay publication of the result by seven days. Hilliard approved an agreed order allowing the claim on 22 July, and the force then objected to any publicity and to non-party access to the case papers until the retention proceedings ended.

Hilliard told the parties on 22 July he could see no justification for departing from open justice. A journalist then applied for the case papers under Civil Procedure Rule 5.4C, and Thames Valley Police narrowed its request to a delay until 15 October to protect what it called the integrity of its investigation.

Thames Valley Police dropped the application on 7 October, the day before the hearing, apart from some editing of documents. The court ordered the force to pay Mountbatten-Windsor's reasonable costs of responding to it; the Central Criminal Court took a neutral stance.

Names and contact details of the officers and staff on the investigation, and details of the force's internal lawyers, are redacted from the released papers, with ranks left in. Hilliard said there was no public interest at this stage in identifying them.

Royal Lodge

The Crown Estate said on 9 October that the Royal Lodge lease had ended, with Mountbatten-Windsor receiving £302,000 in compensation after paying £1.8 million towards repairs. The Crown Estate nets about £1.5 million and will market the house through two agents.

Mountbatten-Windsor signed the 75-year lease in 2003 for a £1 million premium and a duty to carry out a refurbishment the National Audit Office put at £7.5 million in 2005. The lease set his rent at one peppercorn, payable if demanded.

Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, chair of the Commons Public Accounts Committee, wrote to the Crown Estate and the Treasury on 29 October 2025 asking whether the lease met the Crown Estate's statutory duty to obtain the best consideration. The Crown Estate replied on 28 November 2025 that its inspections during the tenancy had been carried out on a need-only basis and that compensation before repairs would have been £488,342.21.

The National Audit Office reported on 5 June 2026 that Mountbatten-Windsor had sublet three cottages on the Royal Lodge estate and kept the rent, an amount neither the audit office nor the Crown Estate holds. Dan Labbad, the Crown Estate's chief executive, told the committee on 13 July that subletting had been factored into the lease valuation.

Mountbatten-Windsor gave notice to surrender the lease on 30 October 2025 and moved to Wood Farm Cottage at Sandringham in early February, two weeks before his arrest.

Trade envoy emails

Police arrested Mountbatten-Windsor at Wood Farm on 19 February, his 66th birthday, questioned him for 11 hours and released him under investigation. The anti-monarchy group Republic had referred him to police after the US Department of Justice released more than three million pages of Epstein files.

Emails in the Department of Justice release indicate that on 7 October 2010 Mountbatten-Windsor sent Epstein details of forthcoming official trips to Singapore, Vietnam, Shenzhen and Hong Kong, on which he was accompanied by Epstein's business associates, according to the Guardian. On 30 November 2010 he appears to have forwarded official reports of those visits to Epstein five minutes after receiving them from his special assistant.

Mountbatten-Windsor also sent Epstein an investment brief prepared by the UK's Provincial Reconstruction Team in Afghanistan on 24 December 2010, Reuters reported from the same files.

Trade envoys owe a duty of confidentiality over sensitive commercial and political information from official visits under government guidance. Mountbatten-Windsor served as the UK's special representative for trade from 2001 to 2011 and has denied using the role to further his own interests.

MPs agreed a Liberal Democrat motion on 24 February requiring the government to publish papers on his 2001 appointment. Chris Bryant, the trade minister, released 11 documents on 21 May and told MPs it was "standard not to vet members of the royal family".

King Charles said after the arrest that "the law must take its course". Misconduct in public office carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

The Public Office (Accountability) Bill would abolish the offence and replace it with two statutory offences. Nearly 200 people were prosecuted for it between 2014 and 2024 with only four convictions of people in senior positions, according to Tom Frost, a senior law lecturer at Loughborough University.

Windsor allegation

Thames Valley Police said on 22 May that the offence it is investigating can extend to sexual offending and that detectives were examining several aspects of the allegations. Officers were concerned the public believed the inquiry was confined to the trade reports.

Police said on 22 May they were assessing reports that a woman in her 20s was taken to an address in Windsor in 2010 for sexual purposes, and that they had engaged with her lawyer. Brad Edwards, a Florida lawyer, told the BBC in January that his client said Epstein sent her to England in 2010 to have sex with Mountbatten-Windsor at his Windsor home.

Mountbatten-Windsor has consistently denied any sexual wrongdoing. Thames Valley Police has described the 2010 report as an assessment within its wider inquiry.

Assistant Chief Constable Oliver Wright said "our door is open whenever a victim-survivor is ready to engage with us". Police said they were working with the US Department of Justice for further information.

Epstein and Maxwell, 1990s to 2011

Mountbatten-Windsor has said Ghislaine Maxwell introduced him to Epstein in 1999.

Alastair Watson, his former private secretary, wrote in a 2011 newspaper letter that they first met in the early 1990s, and jurors at Maxwell's 2021 trial heard he flew on Epstein's plane in the mid-1990s, PA reported.

Flight logs reported by the Daily Mirror put Mountbatten-Windsor and Maxwell on Epstein's jet to Little St James, Epstein's island in the US Virgin Islands, in February 1999. Epstein and Maxwell were photographed as guests at Balmoral the same year, in a picture later found in Epstein's Manhattan house.

Mountbatten-Windsor and Epstein were photographed at Mar-a-Lago in Florida in February 2000. Estate records released by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee list a $200 charge for "massage, exercise and yoga" during that stay and name Mountbatten-Windsor as a passenger on Epstein's jet from Teterboro, New Jersey, to Palm Beach on 12 May 2000 and again on 16 May 2002.

Epstein and Maxwell attended a Windsor Castle party on 21 June 2000 that partly marked Mountbatten-Windsor's 40th birthday, and he hosted both at a Sandringham shooting weekend in December 2000. Epstein attended Princess Beatrice's 18th birthday party at Windsor Castle on 15 July 2006.

Juan Alessi, Epstein's Palm Beach house manager, said in a 2009 deposition that Mountbatten-Windsor stayed for weeks at a time and received daily massages there, Reuters reported.

Epstein pleaded guilty in Florida in 2008 to state charges of soliciting prostitution and procuring a minor for prostitution, the charges' statutory names, under a non-prosecution agreement with federal prosecutors. He served 13 months, most of it on work release.

Mountbatten-Windsor stayed at Epstein's New York townhouse in December 2010 and was photographed walking with him in Central Park. He told Emily Maitlis of BBC Newsnight in 2019 that the house was a convenient place to stay, that he had been "too honourable" and that contact with Epstein ended in December 2010.

Emails in the Department of Justice release show Mountbatten-Windsor accepting an offer from Epstein in August 2010 of dinner with a 26-year-old Russian woman, and inviting Epstein to Buckingham Palace in September 2010 with the promise of privacy, Classic FM reported.

Mountbatten-Windsor wrote to Epstein on 28 February 2011 that "we are in this together", according to emails published by the Mail on Sunday. Epstein paid £15,000 in March 2011 towards a debt owed by Sarah Ferguson, Mountbatten-Windsor's former wife, to her former assistant; Ferguson said accepting it was "a gigantic error of judgment".

Money and associates

Timur Kulibayev, son-in-law of Kazakhstan's then president, bought Sunninghill Park from Mountbatten-Windsor in 2007 for £15 million, about £3 million above the asking price. The BBC reported in January that Italian court documents trace the purchase money to a company that received funds from a bribery scheme; Kulibayev, who was never charged, says the money was legitimate.

Mountbatten-Windsor said of the sale in 2009 that it was not his business once the price was paid. He did not respond to the BBC in January.

Yang Tengbo, a Chinese businessman excluded from the UK in 2023 by Suella Braverman, then home secretary, lost his appeal to the Special Immigration Appeals Commission on 12 December 2024. The commission found Yang had won an unusual degree of trust from Mountbatten-Windsor; Yang denies spying, and Mountbatten-Windsor's office said he had ceased all contact.

Giuffre and the authorities

Virginia Giuffre said Epstein trafficked her and that Mountbatten-Windsor sexually abused her when she was 17, at Maxwell's London home in 2001 and in New York and the US Virgin Islands. She said Epstein took the photograph of her with Mountbatten-Windsor and Maxwell at 44 Kinnerton Street in Belgravia on 10 March 2001. Mountbatten-Windsor has always denied her account and told Newsnight he had no recollection of meeting her.

A draft statement emailed by Maxwell on 10 January 2015, released in the Department of Justice files, says a photograph was taken at a London meeting in 2001, Sky News reported. Maxwell told Todd Blanche, the US deputy attorney general, in July 2025 that the Giuffre photograph was "literally a fake photo".

A third party complained to the Metropolitan Police about Epstein in January 2015, and Giuffre's representatives complained in May 2015. The Met decided in November 2016, after early advice from the Crown Prosecution Service, not to open a full investigation because inquiries would focus on activities and relationships outside the UK, according to a Met statement reported by Channel 4 News.

Commander Alex Murray said in November 2019 that a review prompted by Epstein's death had left the decision unchanged. Cressida Dick, then Met commissioner, said in August 2021 that no one was above the law and that she had asked officers to look again at the material.

The Met said on 10 October 2021 that its review of a document from a US civil action had concluded with no further action, PA reported. A further review ended with no further action in August 2022, and in January 2024, after a deposition by Johanna Sjoberg was unsealed, the Met said no investigation had been launched.

Johanna Sjoberg said in that 2016 deposition that Mountbatten-Windsor touched her breast at Epstein's New York house in 2001, when she was 21. A Buckingham Palace spokesperson said her claims were "categorically untrue".

Giuffre's brother Sky Roberts and sister-in-law Amanda Roberts asked the Independent Office for Police Conduct in October 2025 to review the Met's handling. The IOPC declined to comment and said it investigates referrals that meet its criteria.

The Mail on Sunday published an email in October 2025 suggesting Mountbatten-Windsor gave Giuffre's date of birth and social security number to his on-duty Met protection officer in 2011. Commander Ella Marriott said on 13 December 2025 that the Met had received no additional evidence that would support reopening the investigation, and Mountbatten-Windsor denied the claim.

Giuffre's family said they were "deeply disappointed" and that the decision was made without explanation or any conversation with them. The Met said in February 2026 that it was assessing claims about trafficking through London airports and contacting former and serving protection officers.

US prosecutors and the civil case

Alexander Acosta, then US Attorney in Miami, approved Epstein's 2008 non-prosecution agreement. The Department of Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility found on 12 November 2020 that Acosta had used poor judgement but had committed no professional misconduct.

Federal prosecutors in New York charged Epstein on 8 July 2019 with trafficking girls for rape and with conspiracy, counts the indictment calls sex trafficking of minors. Epstein was found dead in his cell on 10 August 2019, and the city's chief medical examiner ruled the death a suicide.

Geoffrey Berman, then US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said on 27 January 2020 that Mountbatten-Windsor had provided "zero cooperation". Berman said on 9 March 2020 that Mountbatten-Windsor had shut the door on voluntary co-operation.

Blackfords, Mountbatten-Windsor's lawyers, said in June 2020 that the Department of Justice had told them he was not and had never been a target, and that he had offered help three times. They accused the department of breaching confidentiality.

Mountbatten-Windsor had said on 20 November 2019, four days after the Newsnight broadcast, that he was stepping back from public duties and was willing to help any appropriate law enforcement agency.

Giuffre sued Mountbatten-Windsor in Manhattan federal court on 9 August 2021. His lawyer Andrew Brettler disputed the validity of service, and the High Court in London first refused and then, in September 2021, agreed to serve the papers under the Hague Convention.

Judge Lewis Kaplan refused on 12 January 2022 to dismiss the case, finding that Giuffre's 2009 settlement with Epstein could be read in at least two reasonable ways. Kaplan made no finding on whether her allegations were true.

Mountbatten-Windsor settled on 15 February 2022 for an undisclosed sum without admitting liability, in a statement that said he regretted his association with Epstein and accepted she had suffered as an established victim of abuse. The settlement is a private agreement and records no finding of fact.

The Daily Telegraph reported that the settlement was worth about £12 million including a donation to Giuffre's charity, with the late Queen meeting part of the cost; neither figure has been confirmed on the record.

A federal jury convicted Maxwell on five of six counts on 29 December 2021, and she was sentenced to 20 years in 2022. Mountbatten-Windsor was named at her trial only by pilots listing passengers on Epstein's planes, and the US Supreme Court declined her appeal on 6 October 2025.

A Department of Justice and FBI memo of 7 July 2025 said investigators had found no credible evidence to predicate charges against uncharged third parties. Maxwell declined to answer questions from the House Oversight Committee on 9 February 2026, and her lawyer David Oscar Markus said she would speak if granted clemency.

Robert Garcia and 15 other Democrats on the House Oversight Committee asked Mountbatten-Windsor on 6 November 2025 to sit for a transcribed interview by 20 November. He had not responded by that date, AFP reported.

Giuffre died by suicide in April 2025, aged 41. Her memoir was published in October 2025.

Titles and Parliament

Mountbatten-Windsor returned his military affiliations and royal patronages to Queen Elizabeth on 13 January 2022 and said he would defend the Giuffre case as a private citizen. He gave up use of the Duke of York title and his Garter and Royal Victorian Order honours on 17 October 2025, saying: "I vigorously deny the accusations against me."

A Royal Sign Manual warrant removed him from the Roll of the Peerage on 30 October 2025, and Letters Patent removed the style of His Royal Highness and the title of prince on 3 November 2025.

Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Commons Speaker, reminded MPs on 23 October 2025 that criticism of members of the royal family can be made only on a substantive motion, under the rules set out in Erskine May. Rachael Maskell, Labour MP for York Central, introduced a private member's bill in December 2022 to allow titles to be removed; it did not progress.

Mountbatten-Windsor lost publicly funded police protection in 2022, PA reported. A palace source told PA on 5 October that the King had told his brother not to use money from him to fund the judicial review.

Thames Valley Police said on 8 October that its investigation of "a man in his 60s from Norfolk" continues. Mountbatten-Windsor remains released under investigation.

Mandelson investigation

Peter Mandelson, the former UK ambassador to the US, faces a separate Met investigation for misconduct in public office, launched on 3 February after a government referral over emails suggesting he passed market-sensitive information to Epstein in 2009. Police arrested him in Camden on 23 February and later released him under investigation with bail conditions removed.

Metropolitan Police officers executed search warrants at his addresses in Camden and Wiltshire on 6 February. Mandelson has denied acting criminally or for financial gain.

Sir Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan Police commissioner, pressed US authorities in March for unredacted correspondence between Mandelson and Epstein held in the US files, AAP reported. The Met had not said whether it would need a formal mutual legal assistance request.

Mountbatten and the FBI file

Louis Mountbatten, Earl Mountbatten of Burma, was Prince Philip's uncle and King Charles's great-uncle; Charles called him in 2015 the grandfather he never had. The IRA killed Mountbatten with a boat bomb at Mullaghmore in County Sligo on 27 August 1979, along with his 14-year-old grandson Nicholas Knatchbull, 15-year-old crew member Paul Maxwell and the Dowager Lady Brabourne.

Elizabeth de la Poer Beresford, Baroness Decies, told the FBI in February 1944, while being interviewed about another matter, that Mountbatten had "a perversion for young boys", according to a file released to the historian Andrew Lownie under US freedom of information law and reported in August 2019. The report was written by EE Conroy, head of the FBI's New York field office, who assessed that Decies appeared to have no special motive, Village magazine reported.

Lownie has published summaries of later entries in the file, including a 1952 FBI dismissal of accusations made by another informant, and wrote on 6 April that much of the file remains closed. The Sunday Times reported in August 2019 that a further file covering April to July 1956 was destroyed in May 2017 after Lownie asked for it.

Lownie's 2019 book The Mountbattens included accounts from two men, under the pseudonyms Sean and Amal, who said they were taken from Kincora Boys' Home in Belfast to Mountbatten's holiday home, Classiebawn Castle in County Sligo, in 1977 and abused there. The Mountbatten family denied the accounts, and John Barry, a former Classiebawn staff member, rejected them in a newspaper letter.

Lownie wrote in December 2020 that he had interviewed two of the boys, that some material was cut on legal advice and that he would "stand by what I have written". An Garda Síochána refused in 2019 to release the 1977 visitor logs from the Classiebawn security checkpoint, citing files generated in a criminal investigation, Village reported.

Arthur Smyth, a former Kincora resident, waived his anonymity in October 2022 to allege that Mountbatten sexually abused him twice in 1977, when he was 11. His solicitor, Kevin Winters of KRW Law, issued a writ in the High Court in Belfast naming the Department of Health, the Northern Ireland Secretary, the Police Service of Northern Ireland, the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust and the Business Services Organisation, with the allegations against Mountbatten to follow in a statement of claim.

Three Kincora staff were jailed in 1981 for abusing 11 boys, and the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry later found that 39 boys had been abused there. Its chair, Sir Anthony Hart, reported on 20 January 2017 that he had found no credible evidence that intelligence agencies used the home or that prominent establishment figures abused boys there, and said it was "time to finally lay these unfounded myths to rest".

Marie Anderson, the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland, found on 23 September 2022 that Royal Ulster Constabulary officers failed in their duty to Kincora's victims by not acting on information received between 1973 and 1976. The ombudsman found no evidence of interference by other agencies.

The University of Southampton bought the Broadlands archive of Mountbatten papers in 2011, and a ministerial direction of 5 August 2011 allowed the Cabinet Office to keep some items closed. The Information Commissioner ordered release in December 2019; the First-tier Tribunal ruled on 15 March 2022 that some material could stay withheld on grounds including international relations and royal communications, noting the vast majority of the papers were public.

Alex Burghart, a Cabinet Office minister, told Parliament on 18 July 2023 that the department's legal costs in the case were £180,454. Combined costs exceeded £600,000 by November 2021, the Guardian reported, and Lord David Owen said the spending was "a grotesque abuse of public money".

Charles, Savile and what officials knew

Jimmy Savile advised Charles informally for about 20 years, according to letters from 1986 to 2006 obtained by the makers of the Netflix documentary Jimmy Savile: A British Horror Story, released on 6 April 2022. Charles asked Savile in December 1989 to meet the Duchess of York, writing that she "could do with some of your straightforward common sense!"

Savile drew up crisis advice for the royal household after the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, including an incident room with its own telephone lines, and Charles wrote in 1989 that he had shown a memo of Savile's points to his father. Rowan Deacon, the documentary's director, said Charles was "duped, like we all were".

Catherine Mayer wrote in her 2015 biography of Charles that Savile visited Highgrove and St James's Palace regularly. A handwritten birthday card from Charles, sold by RR Auction in October 2023, thanks Savile for all he had done for the country and for the prince.

Charles and Camilla said in October 2011, after Savile's death, that they were saddened. The Guardian reported in 2022 that there was no suggestion Charles knew of Savile's crimes.

Cheshire Police told a man who reported in 1963 that Savile had raped him to forget about it and recorded nothing, Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary reported in March 2013. A Metropolitan Police ledger from about 1964 named Savile in connection with Duncroft School, an anonymous letter to the Met in 1998 was graded an untested source and restricted and a 2003 complaint to the Met did not lead to Savile being interviewed.

HMIC found that the failure to connect the allegations was critical. Surrey Police investigated assaults at Duncroft for 29 months and interviewed Savile under caution on 1 October 2009; Sussex Police closed a 2008 complaint without interviewing him, and neither force charged him.

Cliff Graham, a senior civil servant at the Department of Health and Social Security, made Savile a leading member of the Broadmoor task force in 1988, Bill Kirkup and Ann Marshall found in their 2014 report. The hospital's medical superintendent had given Savile keys and accommodation; the report found no evidence officials considered the risks, and at least five of 11 complainants at Broadmoor were abused.

Sir Robert Armstrong, the Cabinet Secretary, blocked a knighthood for Savile in 1983, citing press revelations about his private life, according to files released in 2013. Sir Robin Butler rejected Margaret Thatcher's renewed request in 1988, writing that Savile's manner of life would send "an unhelpful signal", and Savile was knighted in 1990 with the committee's reasons unrecorded.

An anonymous letter to the Cabinet Office on 7 July 1998 warned of "unspeakable facts" about Savile. Helen MacNamara, then head of the Honours and Appointments Secretariat, told the child abuse inquiry that a similar letter today would be passed to police.

Savile died in October 2011, and Alison Levitt QC, reviewing the prosecution decisions in January 2013, said the allegations were "both serious and credible".

Police and the NSPCC recorded 214 crimes by Savile across 28 force areas in their January 2013 report, from 450 people who came forward, 73 per cent of them under 18 at the time. The report counted 34 rapes, 28 of them of children.

Dame Janet Smith found on 25 February 2016 that Savile had 72 victims connected to the BBC, including eight people he raped, and that complaints were raised on eight occasions, five by staff. Junior and middle-ranking staff knew of complaints, and Smith found no evidence that anyone at head of department level or above did.

Kate Lampard's report on Savile's access to NHS hospitals, published on 26 February 2015, made 14 recommendations.

Charles, Peter Ball and the caution

Peter Ball, then Bishop of Gloucester, accepted a police caution on 8 March 1993 over the sexual abuse of Neil Todd, an offence recorded as gross indecency, and resigned; his diocese included Highgrove. Todd, who first complained in 1992, took his own life in 2012.

Lord Lloyd of Berwick, a serving Lord Justice of Appeal, telephoned the investigating officer and wrote to the Chief Constable and the Director of Public Prosecutions in support of Ball. The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse found it hard to see any purpose in his contact other than to influence the outcome.

Tim Rathbone MP wrote in support of Ball on House of Commons notepaper, and Tim Renton MP wrote to the Director of Public Prosecutions, Dame Barbara Mills, who personally reviewed his letter. Former headmasters Ian Beer and James Woodhouse and the heads of Radley, Harrow and Cranleigh also wrote.

Gloucestershire police and the Crown Prosecution Service agreed on 26 February 1993 that a caution was most appropriate. The inquiry found the CPS advice wrong and against Home Office guidance and that Ball could have been charged with further offences; Detective Inspector Wayne Murdock said the letters of support had no effect on him.

Charles's private secretary met Dr Andrew Purkis at Lambeth Palace in August 1994 to ask about Ball, and Charles wrote to Ball in November 1994 that the Archbishop of Canterbury was trying to return him to ministry. Charles wrote to Ball on 16 February 1995 of "the monstrous wrongs that have been done to you".

Ball told Charles the caution followed a false complaint by someone persecuting him, the inquiry found. Charles said he was unsure whether he had been told of the caution at the time and had not grasped its significance or asked for details.

The Duchy of Cornwall bought a house specifically to rent to Ball and his twin brother Michael, a former Bishop of Truro, who began moving in in June 1996 and stayed until 2011. The brothers helped choose the property, Charles was kept informed and Charles invited Ball to lead communion services at Highgrove after the caution.

Charles told the inquiry in July 2018 that he had been deceived over a long period and had sent small gifts of money to both brothers. "At no stage did I ever seek to influence the outcome," he wrote.

Ball was sentenced to 32 months in October 2015 for abusing 18 young men aged 17 to 25, and was released in February 2017 after 16 months. He died in June 2019, aged 87.

Dame Moira Gibb's review for the Church of England, published in June 2017, found that Lambeth Palace received seven letters about Ball in December 1993 and passed one to police. Gibb found that Ball tried to use his royal contacts and found no evidence that the royal family intervened; Archbishop Justin Welby said the Church had "colluded and concealed".

The child abuse inquiry said on 9 May 2019 that Charles's actions were misguided and "could have been interpreted as expressions of support" for Ball, and that Lord Carey's handling showed poor judgement. A Clarence House spokesman said it was a matter of deep regret that the prince had been deceived.

Smith, Morrison and Janner

Lancashire Constabulary sent a file on Cyril Smith, then a Rochdale councillor, to the Director of Public Prosecutions on 11 March 1970, with officers wanting to charge him. The DPP's office advised against prosecution, and Smith was told on 25 March 1970 that no action would be taken.

The DPP's press office told a journalist in 1979 that it had no record of a file on Smith, and an MI5 note recorded that the statement was untruthful. The child abuse inquiry found the false denial may have helped kill the story.

A Crown Prosecution Service lawyer in Rochdale found on 17 June 1998 that there was a realistic prospect of convicting Smith but advised against charging him on abuse-of-process grounds. The inquiry found Smith ought to have been charged and that a valuable opportunity was lost.

David Steel, then Liberal leader, was told by Smith in 1979 that a Private Eye report about him was correct, took no action and later recommended him for a knighthood without asking whether he was still offending. The inquiry found Steel abdicated his responsibility and that the 1988 knighthood decision showed considerable deference to power.

Sir Antony Duff, director general of MI5, told Sir Robert Armstrong in November 1986 that two sources reported Peter Morrison had "a penchant for small boys". Armstrong told Thatcher orally and treated it as a matter for the Conservative Party; nobody informed police, and Morrison became Thatcher's parliamentary private secretary in 1990.

Cyril Smith and Peter Morrison were known or rumoured in the 1970s and 1980s to be sexually interested in children and were protected from prosecution by police, the Director of Public Prosecutions and political parties, the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse said in February 2020. The inquiry found no evidence of an organised paedophile network at Westminster.

Leicestershire Police and the Crown Prosecution Service decided against charging Greville Janner, a Labour MP and later peer, after investigations in 1991 and in 2006 to 2007. The child abuse inquiry found the 2007 decisions unsound, while Sir Richard Henriques found in a 2016 review for the CPS that the 1991 decision not to charge was also wrong.

Alison Saunders, then Director of Public Prosecutions, decided on 16 April 2015 not to prosecute Janner because of his dementia, although the evidence test was met. A victims' review overturned the decision on 29 June 2015; Janner was found unfit to stand trial and died in December 2015, and the case was dropped in January 2016.

The IOPC found potential misconduct by three Leicestershire officers in the Janner investigations, all of whom had retired, so no proceedings followed. The inquiry made no finding on whether Janner was guilty.

Carl Beech was jailed for 18 years on 26 July 2019 for false allegations that led the Met's Operation Midland to investigate former ministers and senior officers, including Janner, Lord Bramall and Harvey Proctor. Sir Richard Henriques found that Met officers obtained search warrants unlawfully on the basis of inaccurate statements to a district judge.

Information and court papers

Thames Valley Police has asked anyone with information relevant to its misconduct in public office investigation to contact the force, and said reports from victim-survivors will be handled with respect for their privacy and anonymity.

The 8 October order releases the claimant's statement of facts and grounds, both defendants' acknowledgements of service, the force's summary grounds and the consent order to anyone who requests them under Civil Procedure Rule 5.4C(1). Any party or member of the press may apply to challenge the redactions within 14 days of the order, by 22 October.