Palace Security Still Not Good Enough?

Nearly seven years later, after Daily Mirror's Ryan Parry entered Buckingham Palace, security seems to still be shoddy. "Buckingham Palace has suspended a chauffeur after undercover reporters claimed to have gained access to highly sensitive areas of the building."

Brian Sirjusingh, a Palace chauffeur, was paid £1,000 to take two News of the World reporters into the Palace and give them a tour. BBC royal correspondent Peter Hunt said "Mr Sirjusingh was a pool chauffeur - one called when the dedicated royal chauffeurs are unavailable."

Mr Sirjusingh took the reporters, who were posing as two Middle Eastern Businessmen, into the Royal Garage and they were waved inside without security checks. Once they were inside, Mr Sirjusingh showed them vehicles used by the Royal family, and allowed one reporter to sit in the car. The reporter asked, "This is where her majesty sits?" and Mr Sirjusingh replied, "That's where she sits, yes."

A Scotland Yard spokesman said: "We are naturally concerned about the issues raised by this story and are liaising with palace officials about their staff security arrangements."

The newspaper's royal editor, Robert Jobson, told the BBC that lessons should have been learnt from previous security breaches.

He said: "There have been a number of security breaches at the palace over the years but this is right up there in terms of being a flagrant breach of the security. They should have been checked as they walked in but they weren't and therefore it could easily have been a terrorist walking into the palace and planting a bomb in the car rather than the News of the World exposing the poor security of the palace."

The Palace said they were taking this matter "very seriously".

Click here for the article from BBC News and here for a previous article on the security breech in 2003.