Parliament should examine the regulation, financing and accountability of the monarchy
“When there is a select committee on the Queen,” Walter Bagehot wrote in 1867, “the charm of royalty will be gone. Its mystery is its life. We must not let in daylight upon magic.” Yet as the Guardian’s reporting shows, the monarchy rests not on mantras and vapours, but on a solid financial foundation that has been deliberately shielded from parliamentary accountability. David Cameron was more servant of the crown than of the people when he drew a veil around the monarchy so zealously. In 2011, the then prime minister wanted to end what he described in his memoirs as a “painful annual discussion … about whether individual members of the family were ‘good value for money’”. At a time when Mr Cameron, an ardent monarchist, was inflicting painful cuts to public services, he made it a priority to accommodate the then Queen’s long-held wish to protect herself from scrutiny.
The result was that the prime minister, the chancellor and the keeper of the privy purse now decide every year on the amount of money – in the form of a sovereign grant – the monarch receives from the government, free from troublesome MPs, civil society and newspapers who might suggest taking into account private royal resources, such as those derived from their landholdings. That was the recommendation of the public accounts committee in 2005, which recognised that these were not inconsiderable sums. The Duchy of Lancaster and the Duchy of Cornwall together produce profits for the King and the Prince of Wales of more than £40m a year. Yet today the sovereign grant is set at a percentage of surplus revenue from the crown estate – a £16bn publicly owned property portfolio. A “golden ratchet” clause in the deal ensures that while funding for the monarchy could increase in line with crown estate profits, it was guaranteed never to fall. The grant has remained at £86m since 2021.
