PRINCE'S MINDERS UNDER FIRE OVER DRUGS

THE role of royal protection officers was under scrutiny last night after
friends of the Prince of Wales expressed concern that they did not stop
Prince Harry's drug-taking and under-age drinking. Prince Charles and
Prince William have now agreed that one of them will always be at Highgrove
when Prince Harry is at home from Eton. The young Prince was unsupervised
in the Gloucestershire house with friends when he experimented with
cannabis last July. His father was in Wales and Prince William away on his
gap year.

The police have not interviewed Prince Harry, 17, or any of his friends
despite the admission that they took drugs and drank at a local pub. Eton,
where the Prince is studying for A levels, is also braced for criticism for
taking no action. In the past pupils involved in drug-taking faced
automatic expulsion.

Andrew Gailey, Prince Harry's housemaster, visited Prince Charles at
Highgrove on Friday for a prearranged visit to discuss the boy's academic
future.

Tony Blair, whose son Euan was found drunk in Central London when he was
16, led the praise for the "sensitive and responsible" way Prince Charles
had handled "every family's nightmare". The Prince sent his younger son to
a South London drugs rehabilitation clinic, where many addicts told him
that they had become involved with hard drugs after taking cannabis.

A friend of Prince Charles said: "The whole thing has been handled well and
Harry hardly touches drink, let alone cannabis, now. But you have to ask
why the protection officer, who accompanied Harry to the pub, never
intervened to stop this sooner."

But St James's Palace said: "The job of protection officers is to protect
the Princes, not to mother them." And Penny Junor, who wrote a biography of
the Prince of Wales, said they were brotherly rather than fatherly figures:
"Members of the Royal Family can tell bodyguards where to go. I suspect the
relationship is servant rather than guardian."