Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor latest: Police issue update on Royal Lodge search after minister calls ex-duke ‘arrogant and entitled’

Searches at Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s former home, Royal Lodge, have now ended, Thames Valley Police said.

Andrew was arrested on Thursday on suspicion of misconduct in public office, spending 11 hours in custody on his 66th birthday, after allegations he shared sensitive information with Jeffrey Epstein during his time as the UK’s trade envoy.

Detectives continued to search his former home in Windsor, Berkshire, over the weekend and into Monday.

Lord Peter Mandelson’s lawyers have said the former cabinet minister was arrested after what they said was a “baseless suggestion that he was planning to leave the country”.

The ex-Labour grandee was released on bail in the early hours of Tuesday morning after his arrest on suspicion of misconduct in public office, which followed claims he leaked sensitive UK government information to the paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.

You can read more from The Independent’s Whitehall editor Kate Devlin below:

But Robert Hazell says there are three main reasons why this may be unlikely. You can read more below:

Jeffrey Epstein may have played a role in Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor becoming a UK trade envoy, a shadow minister has suggested as the government agreed to release the bombshell documents related to his appointment.

In an unprecedented day in parliament that saw MPs from all sides line up to admonish the former prince, trade minister Sir Chris Bryant described Mr Mountbatten-Windsor as “a rude, arrogant and entitled man who could not distinguish between the public interest, which he said he served, and his own private interest”.

MPs unanimously supported a motion to release files related to his appointmentto the trade envoy role, waving it through without a vote after the government backed the Liberal Democrat-led calls to publish the papers, including any vetting and any correspondence from Lord Mandelson.

The Independent’s political correspondent Millie Cooke has this report:

An individual was filmed hanging a picture of the former prince, taken by Reuters photographer Phil Noble after Mr Mountbatten-Windsor was released under investigation, in the Paris museum.

It’s been 90 years since a British royal was removed from the line of succession. That might happen again now that Britain’s government says it will consider introducing legal changes to formally remove Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor from the list of royals in line to the throne.

Despite being stripped of his status as prince in October over his close links with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, the former Prince Andrew, King Charles III‘s younger brother, remains eighth in line to become monarch.

Experts say the process of removing him from the line of succession could be lengthy because it requires the involvement of about a dozen countries that also call the British monarch their head of state.

Nonetheless, momentum for change appears to be building after police last week arrested Mountbatten-Windsor on suspicion of misconduct in public office.

But how would removing him from the line of succession work? You can read more below:

A spokesperson for Christopher Luxon, the country’s prime minister, said: “If the UK government proposes to remove Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor from the order of succession, New Zealand would support it.”