The Queen will once more go cap in hand this year, begging for extra money to run the family business of the monarchy.
But she may find herself stymied as details of her financial life are revealed to critics and citizens.
Just released documents in London paint a picture of a monarch with rumoured private wealth of £90 million (or $138 million), who allows her relatives and courtiers to live for free on the public purse, who expects the state to pay for the repair of her crumbling palaces and who has rented out the apartment of Diana, the late Princess of Wales, to Prince Charles’s charities.
The documents also show an overspending of about $62,000 in the refurbishment of the kitchen and coffee room in Windsor Castle where workmen found spaces under the floors that might provide “rat runs” and overspending of $153,000 in the refurbishment of St. James’s Palace.
The look into the Queen’s finances was reported Wednesday in The Independent as part of a Freedom of Information request. Some of the “so-called most sensitive and embarrassing documents” still remain secret, however, as the British government goes to court to keep them sealed. About 100 letters, emails, memos and documents were released to the newspaper. with more expected to be released soon if the case goes in its favour.
As the drama plays out in the British courts, the Queen will be preparing for a drama of perhaps the proportions of King Lear. This year she and her aides plan to make a case for an increase in her annual payment of about $12 million. Under the terms of a constitutional agreement from 1991, the Civil List, which pays the Queen to perform her royal duties, must be renegotiated at the end of 2010.
The documents released to the Independent show that as early as 2004 Sir Alan Reid, the Keeper of the Privy Purse had unsuccessfully asked the British Department of Culture, Media and Sport for a substantial increase in the $23 million a year funding for the maintenance of the Queen’s crumbling palaces. The request was made at the same time minor royals and courtiers were being allowed to live rent-free in various palaces.
By 2005, according to the Independent, there was mounting pressure from a House of Commons Public Accounts Committee for the Queen’s aides to come clean about the free accommodation schemes.
Documents show that among the royals living rent free in Kensington Palace and St. James’s Palace are the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, the Duke and Duchess of Kent and Princess Alexandria. What’s more, six members of the Royal Household, including the Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures and the Mistress of the Robes, were identified as not paying rent on their accommodation at the time.
More documents reveal that the Palace planned to refurbish and rent out Diana’s apartment at Kensington Palace (referred to as “Apartment 8” by palace aides). After debate between the Palace and the government over the use of the apartment, money to refurbish it and the potential for bad public reaction, it was eventually rented out to Prince Charles’s charities.
A series of emails also show that had the Royal Household acted sooner to switch to “a wholesale provider of gas and electricity,” the Palace could have saved the equivalent of almost $219,000 between 2004 and 2006.
In September 2005 the Queen’s advisers complained to the government about an untenable price rise in utilities of more than 50 per cent. The switch to a wholesale provider was eventually approved by the government, which acknowledged the Queen had been “hard hit” by the cost of energy.
The Independent also reports there was a tussle between the Department for Culture and the Royal household over who was to receive proceeds from the sale of land from the Royal Garden Hotel in Kensington.
It seems that if the $3.8 million from the sale went to the Royal Household, it might affect any increased allocation that the Secretary of State could approve in a spending review. In short, the state said the proceeds belonged to it. Buckingham Palace argued it was the Queen’s.
Other documents show that the British Treasury and the Department of Culture rejected requests for an increase to the grant-in-aid – taxpayers’ money used to upkeep the occupied palace. Royal aides say property repairs to the palace currently could run $49 million, but by the next decade that figure could rise to $61 million.
Royal aides have said that the Queen’s accommodation is in “parlous” condition. In 2007, Princess Anne had a narrow escape after some loose masonry was dislodged from the roof on Buckingham Palace. Last year another piece of the roof fell on a police officer who was on duty.
The financial arrangements of the Royal Family are a complex series of government grants and Civil List payments agreed to by Parliament. And oddly, things like the Crown Jewels, or the paintings by Titian and Caravaggio are not the Queen’s, but rather are held in trust by her for the state.
Palace aides are quoted as saying that the escalating costs of the Royal Family will mean extra money is needed to offset the expenses of maintaining the palaces and for increased staffing costs. The deal for the $23 million to maintain the upkeep of palaces is a second deal that is not due to be upgraded until 2011.
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