Yes. I think it's clearly established you need an Act to remove a Peerage. Whether you need one to remove the title of Prince seems more contested. In 1917 Parliament was first asked to pass the Titles Deprivation Act.

A good briefing here, though doesn't resolve the issue directly. commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-bri...

Though genuinely this seems to be a contested point. On the one hand, an Act of Parliament was sought (and therefore thought required?) to deprive Ernest Augustus of the title Prince in 1917. On the other hand, the title is conferred by Letters Patent and so the royal prerogative.

The House of Commons library briefing seems unclear on this: commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-bri...

Yes, I think that's the correct reading. You need an Act of Parliament legally to deprive someone of a Peerage (and the title of Prince).

Precedent suggests the government will need to lay a Bill before Parliament to turn Prince Andrew, Duke of York into Mr Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor as a matter of law. They should do so.

Renouncing peerage doesn't seem to be the same as being deprive of a peerage, though.

We're undoubtedly in the penumbra of the cardinal convention here. Evans itself recognises exceptions to it. Perhaps the regulation of royal peerages is one.

But presenting this as a quasi-private decision of the monarch seems questionable from the perspective of constitutional convention.

to remove Prince Andrew's peerage before this is official government policy? I think it's absolutely right that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is stripped of his peerage and all royal titles and honours.

at the government's request or with its consent? Under the cardinal convention, the monarch must act on, and use prerogative powers consistently with, ministerial advice, as recognised by the Upper Tribunal in Evans v Information Commissioner. Can the king therefore instruct the Lord Chancellor...

The idea that ouster clauses can be interpreted into oblivion or flatly disapplied is a novelty that sits uneasily alongside the more genuine institutional comity and mutual respect between Parliament and then courts that has historically characterised English law.

Ouster clauses have been a regular feature of judicial review since its earliest history. The courts have regularly given effect to them, respecting Parliament’s intentions and construing them in light of established constitutional principles.

The article will be published by the Law Quarterly Review next summer, but a draft as accepted for publication can now be read on SSRN. We hope you enjoy it! Here's the link to the article: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Closer attention to the common law's history allows for a more nuanced understanding of the courts' attitude to ousters, and recent cases on ouster clauses, such as Oceana and LA, can be seen as more consonant with administrative law's traditionally deferential approach.

What we think this history shows is that much of the modern attitude to ouster clauses, seen most starkly in the Supreme Court's Privacy International judgment, can be rooted in part in the influence of Sir William Wade and his interpretation of the Anisminic case.

Agreed! Utilitarianism mission creep yet again.