• The Duke of Edinburgh’s will will continue to be kept secret after a legal challenge was rejected.
• The international newspaper appealed a judge’s decision to bar the media from a July 2021.
• Hearing on whether the Duke’s will should be kept private, to the Court of Appeal.

The Duke of Edinburgh’s will continue to be kept secret after a legal challenge was rejected.

Just two months shy of turning 100, Prince Philip, the country’s longest-serving consort, passed away on April 9 2021 at the age of 99.

It is customary for the President of the Family Division of the High Court to receive a request to seal the will of a senior member of the royal family after their passing. This prevents the will from being accessible to the public as it would otherwise be.

This indicates that, contrary to how a will would typically be, the senior members of the Royal Family’s wills are not available for public inspection.

The international newspaper appealed a judge’s decision to bar the media from a July 2021 hearing on whether the Duke’s will should be kept secret to the Court of Appeal.

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Last Monday, the attorneys for the outlet claimed that the exclusion was the “most significant interference with open justice.”

Together with Lady Justice King, ir Geoffrey Vos and Dame Victoria Sharp said that they did not understand how the media could have been informed that the hearing was taking place.

They added: “The hearing was at a hugely sensitive time for the Sovereign and her family, and those interests would not have been protected if there had been protracted hearings reported in the press rather than a single occasion on which full reasons for what had been decided were published.”

“These circumstances are, as we have said, exceptional.

“We are not sure that there is a specific public interest in knowing how the assets of the Royal Family are distributed.

“A perceived lack of transparency might be a matter of legitimate public debate, but the (Non-Contentious Probate Rules) allow wills and their values to be concealed from the public gaze in some cases.

“The judge properly applied the statutory test in this case.”

At the hearing last week, Caoilfhionn Gallagher QC argued on behalf of Guardian News and Media. “An entirely private hearing such as this is the most serious interference with open justice. It is an exceptional step that requires exceptional justification.

“In this case, (President of the Family Division of the High Court, Sir Andrew McFarlane) decided to take such an exceptional step without even inviting or permitting members of the media to make submissions about whether such a procedure was fair or justified.”

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