Prince Charles lobbied ministers to change public spending plans in favour of complementary and homeopathic medicine and other often contentious pet causes in a series of demands revealed in a new batch of his secret letters.



The publication of 17 “black spider memos” on Thursday, following a 10-year freedom of information battle by the Guardian, revealed that the prince called for the NHS to reverse cuts to spending on homeopathy and conduct a trial of complementary medicine in England.

In an exchange with then health secretary Alan Johnson, Charles called for a pilot of alternative medicines in the NHS in England. Johnson replied that he and his officials had had a scoping meeting to discuss just that and added: “I have asked for an update on this work in the new year.”

The heir to the throne asked for support for his Afghanistan charity, Turquoise Mountain, which the prince set up in Kabul to help Afghans preserve their traditional crafts. He also demanded a say in the spending of public money on community projects in the UK.

Ministers declined to provide money for Turquoise Mountain but the letters showed that the prince achieved definite influence closer to home in housing and planning policy.

He successfully lobbied for his chief architecture adviser, Hank Dittmar, to brief civil servants working for Caroline Flint, housing minister at that time. She told the prince that Dittmar would “feed in your experiences and consider together how our proposals will work in practice”.

In March 2008 the prince also wrote to Flint asking to install his own people in Whitehall.

He said: “It would be wonderful, as discussed, if we could establish an exchange of secondees. The permanent secretary, Peter Housden, kindly accompanies me on a visit to Upton [a housing project steered by the Prince’s architecture charity] and has been supportive of the idea in principle.”

The letters sparked fresh claims the prince was breaching his constitutional role. The government had originally vetoed the release of the letters claiming that they would would be “seriously damaging to his role as future monarch because, if he forfeits his position of political neutrality as heir to the throne, he cannot easily recover it when he is king”.

“These letters show a deliberate and persistent effort by Prince Charles to interfere in the political process, to demand changes to government policy,” said Graham Smith, chief executive of Republic, the campaign for an elected head of state. “He is deliberately and wilfully abusing his position.”

Clarence House defended the prince against complaints the letters represented unreasonable meddling by the next head of state.



A Clarence House spokesperson said: “The letters published by the government show the Prince of Wales expressing concern about issues that he has raised in public, like affordable rural housing, the quality of hospital food, the preservation and regeneration of historic buildings, an integrated approach to healthcare, climate change, and others.

“In all these cases, the Prince of Wales is raising issues of public concern, and trying to find practical ways to address the issues.”

Need a refresher on the ‘black spider memos’? Watch our video explainer made ahead of their release Guardian

The release of the letters unexpectedly cut short another battle over the publication of the prince’s correspondence with ministers. Following a supreme court judgment in March, 27 letters were released in May. The government was expected to resist the publication of this latest batch, sent to senior Labour ministers from 2006 to 2009, but decided to publish them at short notice.

Recipients included two of the current contenders for the leadership of the Labour party, Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper, both of whom appeared well-disposed towards the Prince’s interventions.

In 2009 Burnham, then health secretary, wrote to the prince to suggest a meeting on topics including the possibility of a study on integrating complementary and conventional healthcare approaches in England.

Burnham chose to make the traditional sign-off to the heir to throne in his own handwriting: “I have the honour to remain, Sir, your Royal Highness’s most humble and obedient servant.”

The prince had written to Burnham’s predecessor, Alan Johnson, to demand greater access to complementary therapies in the NHS alongside conventional medicine.

The prince told him that “despite waves of invective over the years from parts of the medical and scientific establishment” he continued to lobby “because I cannot bear people suffering unnecessarily when a complementary approach could make a real difference”.

He opposed “large and threatened cuts” in the funding of homeopathic hospitals and their possible closure. He complained that referrals to the Royal London homeopathic hospital were increasing “until what seems to amount to a recent ‘anti-homeopathic campaign’”. He warned against cuts despite “the fact that these homeopathic hospitals deal with many patients with real health problems who otherwise would require treatment elsewhere, often at greater expense”.

In another exchange, Cooper, then housing minister, responded positively to the prince’s lobbying. The prince wrote to Cooper in August 2007 about housebuilding, and in particular the party’s “eco towns” initiative. He promoted his architecture charity’s “expertise … on the vital matters of design and environmental sustainability”.



His charity, then known as the Prince’s Foundation for the Built Environment, is considered a bastion of traditional architecture and a conduit for the prince’s often controversial opposition to modern design.



Cooper wrote back four months later and said: “I am strongly of the view that the prince’s foundation should play a significant role in encouraging and advising on the design elements of eco towns, drawing on its well-established expertise and experience.”

Labour MP for Newport, Paul Flynn, who sat on the political and constitutional reform committee, warned about Charles’s specific efforts to promote homeopathy or complementary medicine. He said: “It’s bad science. Completely irrational arguments put forward by him [Prince Charles] and pro-homeopathy people are causing money to be diverted from where it is needed in the NHS into voodoo medicine.”

