royal household

The incident, which was captured on CCTV, "should have led to an immediate and full search of the area" and posed a risk to the welfare of the royal household, a misconduct hearing heard on Monday.

Harry Ireland KC, chairman of the panel, said: "We find the culpability in this matter to be high as there was a deliberate course of conduct by the officer which posed a risk to the welfare of the public and the royal household."

The panel found Mr Cotgreave had committed an "abuse of trust, particularly as working in the royal household", and because he had been "concealing wrongdoing for eight days and lying to fellow officers on three occasions" about the incident.

These included whether Prince Harry could be allowed access to "relevant emails sent between five email accounts of NGN employees and five employees of the Royal Household" between January 2013 and September 2019, Mr Sherborne said.

The barrister said the Royal Household employees were those "involved in Royal Communications and the private secretaries to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II".