Hi Senator, it’s the Duchess of Sussex here...

Meghan (who, don’t forget, ditched royal role) uses her title to cold-call US politicians over maternity pay

MEGHAN Markle has been cold-calling US senators on their private phones and using her royal title to lobby them on the issue of paid parental leave.

She is said to have called the politicians from a withheld number and introduced herself as ‘Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex’.

The use of the title – which she kept despite being stripped of her HRH status along with Prince Harry when the couple quit their royal duties last year – was branded ‘ironic’ by one of the senators she spoke to.

Details of Meghan’s intervention on legislation going through Congress come just days after she sent an open letter to two senior US figures as ‘a parent and a mom’ urging them to push for paid leave.

The duchess – who lives in a £11million mansion in California with Harry and their two children Archie and Lilibet – was given the phone numbers by a Democrat senator from New York who is a vocal campaigner for the change.

The US is among a handful of nations that do not guarantee paid leave or maternity or paternity pay. Plans to make 12 weeks of paid leave part of President Joe Biden’s £1.3trillion ‘Build Back Better’ agenda were scrapped from proposed legislation but then reinstated in a Uturn by the Democrats. The 40-year-old duchess, pictured, has spoken before on parental leave and is also said to want to be part of a ‘working group’ on the topic. Republican senator Shelley Moore Capito said that when Meghan called she initially thought the call was from a fellow senator in her West Virginia state she has previously spoken to over the legislation, because the caller ID was blocked. She told the Politico website: ‘I’m in my car. I’m driving. It says caller ID blocked. Honestly I thought it was Senator [Joe] Manchin. His calls come in blocked. And she goes “Senator Capito?” I said, “Yes.” She said: “This is Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex”.’ The politician added that she ‘couldn’t figure out how [Meghan] got my number’. Senator Susan Collins from Maine, who also received a call, said: ‘Much to my surprise, she called me on my private line and she introduced herself as the Duchess of Sussex, which is kind of ironic. I was happy to talk with her. But I’m more interested in what the people of Maine are telling me about it.

‘She just weighed in that she thought paid leave was really important, and I told her there were a lot of different approaches, and people were working on it.’

Democrat senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a vocal campaigner for parental leave, said she gave the phone numbers to Meghan, who is intending to call others.

‘[She] wants to be part of a working group to work on paid leave long-term and she’s going to be,’ she said. ‘Whether this comes to fruition now or later, she’ll be part of a group of women that hopefully will work on paid leave together.’

Last month Meghan wrote an open letter to Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, and Chuck Schumer, the majority leader in the US Senate, asking them to consider her plea for paid leave ‘on behalf of my family, Archie and Lili and Harry’.

In the extraordinary 1,030word letter, she argued that parents should not be forced to ‘choose between earning a living and having the freedom to take care of their child’.

Drawing on her own childhood, she suggested that her family had been impoverished – even though her father was an Emmy award-winning lighting director and she was educated at private schools.