Published almost a year ago, I am re-posting the following article written by Richard Norton-Taylor which helps to explain somewhat, some of the reasons why the UK Government may have refused to release any records they hold in relation to the former Prince Andrew, now ‘officially’ referred to as “Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor”, during the some 10 years (2001-2011) he served as a UK taxpayer-funded trade envoy.
Prince Andrew meets King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia at a State Banquet in London, 2007. (Photo: Anwar Hussein / Alamy)
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.
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.
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”.
Richard Norton-Taylor is an editor, journalist, playwright, and the doyen of British national security reporting. He wrote for the Guardian on defence and security matters and was the newspaper’s security editor for three decades.
I am also re-posting below the following related article published by the BBC.
I vehemently agree that the records relating to Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s ten year tenure (2001-2011) as a UK taxpayer-funded trade envoy must be investigated and the records made publicly available.
ByBen King and Josh Martin (Business Reporters) • 15 February 2026
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s time as trade envoy should be investigated for possible corruption, a former business secretary said.
Files released by the US Department of Justice appear to show the former prince forwarded UK government documents and other commercial information to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Speaking about reports of Andrew leaking sensitive information about the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and Aston Martin while trade envoy, Sir Vince Cable, said his behaviour was “totally unacceptable”.
Andrew has always consistently and strenuously denied any wrongdoing.
Sir Vince, who was secretary of state for business and trade for some of the former duke’s time as trade envoy, said: “We need a police or DPP [director of public prosecutions] check on whether criminal corruption took place and a government investigation into how this was allowed to happen.”
In his role as a UK trade envoy - which ran from 2001 to 2011 - the then-Duke of York travelled globally and enjoyed privileged access to senior government and business contacts around the world.
In 2010, he apparently passed on an email conversation about Aston Martin and RBS to a contact, David Stern, who passed it on to disgraced financier Epstein.
That conversation with Terence Allen, an investment banker based in Abu Dhabi, has some details of RBS’s plans to restructure, and unflattering reflections on the chief executive, Stephen Hester.
The email also describes “conflicts between internal parties” at Aston Martin.
The BBC has contacted Stern for comment.
It is not clear how much of this information came from his role as trade envoy. Andrew was a customer of RBS, and may have spoken to the management in that capacity, or in another.
The bank was majority owned by the taxpayer at the time.
The same year, Andrew appears to have forwarded government reports from visits to Vietnam, Singapore and China to Epstein, according to the recently published files.
Emails from a different source have also emerged suggesting he passed on information about Iceland from the Treasury to a banker contact of his, Jonathan Rowland.
According to official guidance, trade envoys have a duty of confidentiality over sensitive, commercial, or political information about their official visits.
Thames Valley Police on Wednesday said it had spoken with specialists from the Crown Prosecution Service about allegations that Mountbatten-Windsor shared confidential reports from his role as the UK’s trade envoy with Epstein.
Labour MP and women and equalities committee chair Sarah Owens said Mountbatten-Windsor must face questions from police and Parliament, while her colleague Rachael Maskell told the BBC Mountbatten-Windsor had been “conservative with the truth”.
“We need to know what was happening in those circles and therefore I think it would be right to be able to scrutinise, have transparency and to get to the bottom of all these dealings,” Maskell said.
Maskell said Andrew should also be stripped of his succession rights to the throne, as well as a councillor of state.
“All of these titles and positions need to be addressed so we’re just left with Andrew the citizen and a citizen that is fully accountable,” she said.
I highly recommend reading the following article published by Declassified UK regarding Whitehall’s seemingly strong “reluctance” to release to the public any of the files relating to the period when “Prince Andrew” served as a UK taxpayer- funded “trade envoy” in the Middle East.
