A senior member of the Royal Family has privately backed Joanna Lumley’s campaign for Gurkha settlement rights, the actress told MPs yesterday.

Ms Lumley said she had received a letter of support but would not name the author, although she later insisted that it was neither the Prince of Wales nor the Duke of Edinburgh.

There was speculation last night that it was the Duchess of Cornwall, whose husband is Colonel-in-Chief of the Royal Gurkha Rifles. It was claimed that she wrote to the actress last year. Ms Lumley is a friend of several members of the Royal Family, including Prince Charles and the Duchess, whose wedding she attended in 2005. She is also an ambassador for the Prince’s Trust.

In April last year she delivered a get-well gift personally to the Duke of Edinburgh who was receiving treatment for a chest infection at the King Edward VII Hospital in London.

The star of Absolutely Fabulous appeared alongside a Gurkha officer to express her shock that last week’s Government defeat had not yet led to a change of policy.

“I do not know what we have to do. I don’t know where else we have to go. We have gone to the High Court, we have gone to the press, we have gone to the people and to Parliament. Where do we go to?” Ms Lumley asked members of the Home Affairs Select Committee.

She added: “The Royal Family are not allowed to get involved, although personally I have had a letter of support.”

She also told the committee that she had written three letters to the Prime Minister and had received no acknowledgment from him, though she had had one from an official.

Downing Street denied last night that it had snubbed her, insisting that the letters were acknowledged and that Ms Lumley had been offered and accepted a meeting with the Home Secretary.

No 10 said it would consider a further request from Ms Lumley to meet Gordon Brown to discuss the matter privately.

Ms Lumley accused ministers of scare tactics in claiming that 36,000 retired Gurkha soldiers who left the British Army before 1997 would come to live in Britain if settlement rights were granted.

The committee was told that the Government’s own estimate of the cost of allowing all Gurkha veterans to settle could be one third of the figure quoted by ministers. Martin Salter, the Labour MP for Reading West, said the estimates ranged from between £425 million to £1.6 billion.

Kevan Jones, a junior Defence Minister, said the next Gurkha campaign would be a demand for equal treatment on pensions, which would require a one-off payment of £1 billion and £500 million annually.

Further financial demands could jeopardise the future of the Gurkha regiment, he said. “We want to ensure that we can continue to recruit to the brigade of Gurkhas. If that becomes unjustifiable we will have to balance that against other commitments to other regiments.”

He said that a deadline of the parliamentary recess, the end of July, had been set for the Government to come up with a new package after last week’s Commons defeat.

Times Recommends

• 6 reasons not to give gifts this Christmas
• Remembrance Day: All the lonely heroes