Police barred from searching Queen Elizabeth's estates for looted artefacts

Police have been barred from searching the Queen’s private estates for stolen or looted artefacts after ministers granted her a personal exemption from a law that protects the world’s cultural property, The Guardian has learned.

Buckingham Palace and the government are refusing to say why it was deemed necessary in 2017 to give the Queen an exemption that prevents police from searching Balmoral and Sandringham.

A spokesperson for the Queen dismissed any suggestion that stolen or looted artefacts were being held on the monarch’s private estates.

The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), which gave the monarch the special dispensation, declined to say whether it had been proposed by royal aides or ministers. The DCMS is also keeping secret a set of emails that may shed light on why the Queen was granted immunity from the law.

However, documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act appear to suggest the department used opaque language in a parliamentary bill that obscured the purpose of the exemption from the public.

The documents were requested by the Guardian as part of an ongoing investigation into Queen’s consent, an obscure parliamentary mechanism that gives the monarch advanced sight of proposed laws, including those affecting public functions, private property and personal interests.