No Spending Cuts For The Windsors

[oldironside]

Revealed: the royal waive which means no spending cuts for the Windsors

• Under law, MPs can only vote to increase civil list
• Queen's income outpaced inflation for two decades

The Royal Family is to be exempt from any cuts in public spending next year when its civil list funding is settled for the next 10 years.

Although all of the major political parties are vying to demonstrate their willingness to wield the axe on public spending, MPs will be powerless to reduce the £7.9m a year paid under the civil list because of an obscure deal struck between Buckingham Palace and the Treasury in 1972 when the current legislation governing royal finances was drawn up.

Palace officials made clear earlier this summer that they are actually seeking a rise in the annual civil list payment to cover "increased costs" despite the fact that they currently have a £21m surplus in the reserves on the civil list account.

Informal talks between the Treasury and the palace are already under way.

A Treasury order settling the annual civil list until 2020 must be laid before parliament by next July to come into effect from January 2011.

But with Gordon Brown and David Cameron acknowledging the need for public spending cuts, any bid for a royal rise looks politically fraught. Earlier this month, Cameron said cuts were an "issue of leadership and the burden had to be shared fairly, including by the rich and powerful".

The palace, when it published its annual report on royal finances in June, claimed that without any increase there would be a £40m backlog of repairs and environmental improvements by 2019.

Uniquely in the public sector, royal civil list finances are negotiated – and debated by MPs –only once every 10 years. A serious misjudgment approved by John Major in the 1990 settlement made provision for an annual inflation rate of 7.5% for the following 10 years and the annual civil list payment was fixed at £7.9m a year.

But inflation in the 1990s turned out to be only 3.7% and the palace built up a huge surplus of £35m, including £12m in interest by the time Tony Blair came to decide the 2000 settlement.

Despite protests from a handful of MPs that the royal family should hand back some of that surplus to the Treasury it was confirmed that parliament could not amend the annual payment downwards. The deal under the 1972 Civil List Act confirmed by background Treasury papers in the National Archives seen by the Guardian means they can only ever vote to increase it. Labour MPs protested at the time that this applied to no other category of public expenditure.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/sep/26/royal-family-windsors-civil-list

[Hopeless Romantic]

1. My first post here, so please be gentle with me.

I have to confess, I'm a little confused about the civil list thing.

Does the money go personally to the Queen for her own use or does it go towards the upkeep of royal palaces, official travel and so on and so forth?


I'm not sure I particularly want a monarchy but I suppose that if most people didn't want one, we wouldn't have one. And if we are going to have one, I suppose it does need to be paid for somehow.

[oldironside]

2. Let me be the first to welcome you.

The answer to your first question is yes and yes. It is paid to the Queen and is supposed to cover the expenses she incurs in performing her duties as head of state.

The question of royal finances is complex and muddled. It is certain that the Queen has a large personal fortune, and whether that is justified or not depends very much on your political view.

If you believe in the divine right of kings (and I have met Englishmen who do), she's God's representative on Earth and we should be grateful for everything she's given us.

I would tend towards the idea that her wealth was stolen from the people by her ancestors (George I in particular was skint when he got off the boat from the continent), Prince Charles has got no more right to own Cornwall than I have (actually my ancestors were in England before his), and in times of economic turmoil it is outrageous that such privileged and unproductive people should be subsidised by the taxpayer. It's rather like someone stealing your car and then asking you to pay their petrol costs.

The question of the future of the monarchy is dependent on the personality of the person on the throne. Brenda (as Private Eye call her) is personally very popular and there aren't too many people alive who remember her father on the throne. Charles is much less unpopular than he was, but we can still anticipate a heated debate as to where we go when the Queen does die. This is a big advance on thirty years ago, when any suggestion that Britain should become a republic was treated in the same way as arguing that the age of consent should be lowered to four (i.e. people became very angry).

[non sociopath skin]

3. Hi HR!

Welcome.

The Skin

[LeftishBrit]

4. Welcome!

I think Oldironside sums it up pretty well.

[oldironside]

5. Thank you very much.

I thought I was having an off day.

[Hopeless Romantic]

6. Thanks for the welcome and yes

Oldironside did sum it up very well