The prince is in advanced talks with Buckingham Palace as efforts are made to force him out of his grade II listed home in Windsor Great Park. Public anger over his refusal to leave Royal Lodge came to a head last week when The Times reported that he had not paid rent for more than two decades.

• The Crown Estate: how does it work and who owns Royal Lodge?

Although Andrew believes he has a “cast-iron lease”, he may agree to move out if he gets financial compensation and is found a suitable alternative property. A source who knows the King said: “Charles has to say to [Andrew’s] face, ‘There’s no choice here, you must now leave Royal Lodge … This is doing real damage to the monarchy, you’ve got to move.’”

Andrew pays peppercorn rent on Royal Lodge under redacted terms of the lease

REX

In other developments:

• A former royal protection officer asked by Andrew to dig up dirt on Virginia Giuffre after she accused the prince of sexually abusing her is understood to have told ­Scotland Yard he did not recall the incident in 2011.

• The prince paid up to £500,000 to a PR expert who sought to discredit Giuffre’s claims by enlisting the help of an internet troll.

• Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s former partner, is poised to start her latest legal bid in the US to overturn her 20-year sentence for sex trafficking offences.

Ghislaine Maxwell

PA

• Pressure was growing on the government to make public all the records relating to Andrew’s time as Britain’s special representative for international trade.

• A royal source said Elizabeth II’s indulgence of her second son “left an unexploded bomb for Charles”.

By convention, MPs are not allowed to criticise royals in the Commons. Opposition Day debates are one of the only ways the conduct of a royal can be raised. According to Erskine May, the guide to parliamentary procedure, such a debate permits “critical language of a kind which would not be allowed in speeches in debate”.

• How parliament could strip Andrew of his dukedom

Sir Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, has separately called for Andrew and his landlord, the Crown Estate, to give evidence to MPs on an influential select committee about the terms of the lease on Royal Lodge.

Sir Ed Davey

HOUSE OF COMMONS/UK PARLIAMENT/PA

A party source said: “The first thing we need is proper transparency and accountability. Clearly there’s a huge amount of public concern and people deserve answers, especially on how their taxpayers’ money is being spent. The longer this whole sorry saga drags on the worse it will be … It’s right that we’re led by the King on this, and if parliament does have to act we hope it can be hand-in-hand with the Palace.”

At present the Palace and the government are engaged in a stand-off. The King has so far been unwilling to ask for an act of parliament be brought forward to strip Andrew of his title, and the government refuses to do so without a formal request from Charles.

• ‘Idle disgrace’ Prince Andrew must leave Royal Lodge, say ministers

It emerged last week that the prince, who lives at the property with his former wife, Sarah Ferguson, 66, is entitled to stay on a peppercorn rent for 75 years. He has already paid at least £8.5 million for the lease and refurbishments.

Andrew and his former wife, Sarah Ferguson

MAX MUMBY/GETTY IMAGES

On Saturday night officials disclosed that Andrew’s daughters, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, do pay rent on properties at St James’s Palace and Kensington Palace. However, they would not confirm if it was paid at a market rate.

Police trawl records

Scotland Yard is on alert for further revelations about Andrew in documents disclosed to a congressional committee in the US. Officers are paying close attention to a memoir by Giuffre that was posthumously published last week.

Giuffre, who took her own life this year, aged 41, accused the prince of sexually assaulting her three times as a teenager.

Last weekend, leaked emails from Congress suggested the prince had passed on Giuffre’s confidential social security number to his taxpayer-funded personal protection officer (PPO) and asked him to dig up more information on her.

It is understood that the Metropolitan Police has spoken to the PPO, who is now retired, but he is apparently unable to recall the incident. The force is carrying out a separate trawl of its records to see if any relevant information was accessed, but many files will have been destroyed after a standard six-year threshold.

It means the Met is unlikely to have sufficient evidence to warrant questioning Andrew and said it was “considering whether any further assessment or review is necessary”.

Andrew paid PR man up to £500,000

Mark Gallagher, left, declined to comment

It can also be revealed that Andrew paid a spinner tasked with rehabilitating his image after his car-crash Newsnight interview in 2019 up to £500,000 over around 15 months.

Mark Gallagher, a former ITV executive, officially stepped down from advising the prince in February 2021 after it was revealed that he had contacted Molly Skye Brown, an internet troll who had accused Giuffre of being an “enabler” for Epstein rather than a victim.

Brown had claimed she had evidence to prove that an infamous photo of Andrew with his arm around Giuffre’s waist at Maxwell’s home was fake. Giuffre’s new memoir states at one point: “Prince Andrew’s team had even gone so far as to try to hire internet trolls to hassle me.”

Gallagher declined to comment. It is understood Andrew was unaware of his approach to Brown and she was never offered any money.