Wherever you go in the world, there are always two things that are never cheap: lobsters and lawyers. The British taxpayer has learned this painful reality as it picks up a bill of more than half a million pounds for defending the government’s case against Prince Harry. The Duke of Sussex has brought a case against the Home Office over its removal of automatic high-level police protection for him and his family when they are in Britain.

So far, £180,000 has been paid in fees to leading barristers to defend the Home Office case. Another £320,000 has gone to the government’s own legal department, comprising the Attorney General, the Solicitor General and Treasury Counsel and all their staff.

Court costs and other bits of pink string and sealing wax have taken the total bill well over £500,000, all paid for by the hard-pressed British taxpayer.

This has caused commentators and even lawyers themselves to ask whether if it is right and proper for a senior member of the Royal Family to sue His Majesty’s government, something that has never happened before but which Prince Harry seems determined to continue, no matter the heavy costs involved.

The case has been going on for two and a half years, with no end in sight.

At the last hearing, Harry lost – badly. In his caustic verdict, the judge, Mr Justice Lane, said the Home Office committee which decided his security level had done nothing irrational or procedurally wrong. The committee was perfectly able to determine the scale of the Prince’s police protection in accordance with the security risk perceived at the time of his occasional visits to Britain.

The judge criticised the reasoning behind the Prince’s claim for all-encompassing protection, even though he is no longer a working member of the Royal Family and lives in self-imposed exile in California.

That resounding verdict has not persuaded the Prince to throw in his hand. He says he will appeal.

He may need permission to do so. If his appeal is refused, it might be an act of kindness. The Prince is reported to have spent more than £1 million so far on making his case. An appeal will simply add noughts to the legal bill.

It is not as if he does not get police protection when he is in Britain. He does.

When he flew from Los Angeles to London following the revelation that King Charles III has cancer, he was met by a police entourage at Heathrow. He was then driven in two black Range Rovers with blacked-out windows to Clarence House to see his father, who had delayed his own departure for Sandringham in order to see his younger son.

When the Prince left the next morning, the same two vehicles – with police officers inside – escorted him to his flight home to the Duchess of Sussex and their two children.

In royal annals, there has never been anyone like the Prince of Litigation. Having won hands-down his case against the Daily Mirror, he has cases outstanding against Associated Newspapers,  publisher of the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday, and News Corp, publisher of the Sun and the News of the World, now defunct.

According to his barrister, the Prince is determined to slay the dragons of the press, as he sees them, even though he knows he may get burnt.

Little has been said publicly, however, about his battle with the Home Office and the huge costs to the public purse –  the Treasury coffers filled by hapless ordinary people whose hard-earned wages are taxed to keep this country going.  

The law is like the Ritz hotel. It is open to everyone, although any private individual or company that willingly crosses the threshold knows it is not going to be cheap. But the taxpayer cannot choose. He has no say in the cases the government choses to fight and which it settles. The taxpayer has no choice but to pay through the nose.