No evidence of a House of Lords petition to strip Prince Harry of royal titles

Social media posts are claiming the House of Lords has launched a petition to strip Prince Harry of his royal titles, but we could find no evidence of any such petition.

The posts say: “House of Lords Launches SHOCKING Petition to Strip Harry of ALL Royal Titles: ‘Exiled for eternity from the Royal Palace!’... See more below”.

They also share a collage featuring a photo of Lord McFall, who was elected Lord Speaker of the House of Lords in 2021, alongside what is almost certainly an artificially generated image of Prince Harry making an angry face. This image has an overly glossy and airbrushed appearance, which is a telltale sign it’s been created with AI, as we explain in our guide to identifying deepfake images.

Overlaid text on the collage says: “Exclusive ‘Prince Harry’s era is over’”, along with a tag saying “Live” in the top left corner, and a small photo of the House of Lords chamber during a speech delivered by the late Queen Elizabeth.

The posts also link to an article that claims the petition was launched by a group of peers, and says that, while “the petition does not carry legal weight on its own, its presence in the House of Lords could signal a growing appetite within parts of the UK establishment for decisive action”.

While it’s not clear exactly which peers are supposed to be involved, or what role the House of Lords itself might be playing in this process, we could find no evidence of a formal petition of this nature being put to the government or Parliament at the time of writing. And we also found no evidence of or reporting on the launch of any such petition by members of the House of Lords.

A spokesperson for the House of Lords told Full Fact: “We have no knowledge of such a petition and there isn’t a mechanism for members of the House of Lords to launch petitions. However, they can sign petitions that already exist.”

There have been several petitions to strip Prince Harry of his royal titles, but these were all rejected for not meeting the petition standards. In response to two of these petitions, the Petitions Committee said it “can’t publish petitions about honours and appointments, including asking for people to be given or have titles removed. In any case, the use of Royal titles are a matter for Her Majesty the Queen and not the Government or Parliament.” Both of these petitions were created before Queen Elizabeth II died in 2022.

Members of the public can use petitions to request a change to the law or to government policy. A peer may present petitions from members of the public to the House of Lords, but this procedure doesn’t lead to any set action and is rarely used. A more formal process occurs when MPs present petitions to the House of Commons, including the petition possibly being sent to the appropriate government department.

Moreover, there are currently no Private Members’ Bills—which are draft laws proposed by individual MPs or peers, rather than the government—concerning Prince Harry being stripped of his royal titles.

In a statement in January 2020, Buckingham Palace reportedly said Prince Harry and Meghan “will not use their HRH [His/Her Royal Highness] titles as they are no longer working members of the Royal Family”. A spokesperson for the couple added that they formally retain their titles but no longer actively use them.

This is not the first time we’ve seen social media posts linking to articles sharing misinformation about members of the Royal Family. We’ve previously written about unevidenced claims that Meghan had given birth to her third child and that Princess Charlotte had been unwell in hospital, which both similarly featured images that were almost certainly AI.