Protection squad chief to be grilled over route
PRESSURE is growing on Peter St Clair-Erskine, seventh Earl of Rosslyn, in the wake of the attack on Charles and Camilla.
The blue-blooded head of royalty protection at Scotland Yard, a favourite of the Queen, is known to fellow officers as plain Commander Peter Loughborough.
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But the astonishing lapses in security during the student riots in London have put the old Etonian in the firing line.
Commander Loughborough, 52, was in charge on Thursday evening when the prince and his wife came under attack as they were driven to the London Palladium at the height of the disturbances. The highly respected officer, holder of the Queen’s Police Medal, will face a series of searching questions about how the heir to the throne and his consort were put in such danger.
But the commander has been in the centre of similar storms in the past. He was only seven months into the royal security hot-seat when a comedian dressed as Osama Bin Laden gatecrashed Prince William’s 21st birthday party at Windsor Castle in 2003.
Commander Loughborough, a graduate of Bristol University, survived that scandal. But last night his colleagues were seriously asking if he would remain in his £100,000-a-year job much longer.