As Rachel Reeves struggles to balance the books, the Royal Family should forgo a £46 million increase in their funding. AIBU?

[User198174]

Due to an increase in Crown Estate profits, the government is set to increase its grant to the Royal Family from £ 86.3 million to £132.1 million.
As the Royal Family appear to be getting by at present on an £86.3 million grant, AIBU to say that they should share in the pain of the national squeeze on finances?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwy5lzq94gqo.amp

Not like any other, but similar enough for the purposes I was setting out.

The late Queen didn’t ask for anything. The Crown Estate's ownership of the seabed was extended in 1964 by the Continental Shelf Act, which granted it rights within 12 nautical miles of the coast. This was driven by the discovery of North Sea oil and gas and a UN Convention on the Territorial Sea and the Contiguous Zone 1958.

Before this act, there was no specific legislation declaring Crown ownership of the seabed, and sovereignty was based on convention rather than a formal legal boundary. There was also no other mechanism by which the government could own and lease out or sell mineral rights for the seabed under our territorial waters.

Yes Balmoral and Sandringham are privately owned. No, the Duchy of Lancaster is not privately owned in that it is not the personal property of Charles, as Balmoral and Sandringham are.

It was passed to the Monarch as an inheritance 750 years ago. If there was no Monarch it would be transferred to the State.

The late Queen didn’t ask for anything

I don't believe that's true

internal records of the Crown Estate show that Queen Elizabeth II personally expressed interest in extending the Crown's rights to the seabed in 1962.

The Queen's inquiry brought attention to an opportunity that the Crown Estate and government then acted upon, leading to a substantial increase in the Crown's holdings and future income from sources such as offshore wind farms

She was canny old Liz was

@Genevieva

I can only assume you are quoting from the royal family website lol.

The crown estates are in no sense at all ‘private’ to Charles and William. They are held in ‘right of the crown’ . A fudge really. It’s a fact that the Windsors do not own them - in fact they will quote that fact to avoid paying taxes ( but then will say it is private when asked how much tax - William refuses completely to grant any info )

So - and it is now a when not an if - the Windsors finally get their grift cancelled - all the land and all the profits ( as was previously the case before Cameron was PM) will be to the state .

And so your attempt to say Andrew’s set up is ‘similar’ enough to other freeholders / leaseholders ? Laughable .

Oh Elizabeth Windsor had her hand out for profits from the seabed !

Why wouldn’t she ? She tried to claim money for heating her palaces - a grant intended for the poor .
She invested in companies exploiting the poorest in society.
She had millions stashed off shore to make sure the taxpayer couldn’t benefit in any way. But @Genevieva you don’t ‘think’ she would have her hand out ?
Of course she did .

Her claim was based on the Canute like ‘belief’ that monarchs owned not just the land but the seabed . Time that nonsense was investigated too

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/05/how-the-queen-came-to-own-the-seabed-around-britain

Re leases . The Queen gave Harry a long lease on a house near Windsor - then Charles removed that ? So which law was that ?
Andrew wasnt a ’working’ royal but he kept his sweet deal . So be a friend to pedophiles and have the FBI wanting to speak to you - and you can keep your peppercorn rent ?

As far as I know Harry paid back a couple of million for the taxpayer re renovation costs . Has Andrew ?
Or come to think of it have any of the Windsors repaid ?

Wow you twist words. That doesn’t mean for her gain. It means for UK gain.

You really think she personally did this? She had staff whose concern was to ensure the best outcome for their employer, like any superrich person.

I think she was highly misguided in her decisions over Andrew, but that doesn’t mean she was trying to steal from the British public, as you imply.

Why am I twisting words if I quote from public record?
Internal records of the Crown Estate show ...

My understanding is that the set up was different. It was a grace and favour home tied to being a working royal, rather like members of the Cabinet get mansion flats on Downing Street and Admiralty House.

You have done a David Irving and deliberately twisted the meaning out of context to push an agenda that the late Queen was a thief.

@Genevieva

Im asking why Andrew was in a mansion with a peppercorn rent and upkeep seemingly ignored - and he wasn’t a working royal

Yet Harry had his lease cancelled ( by which mechanism exactly ?) and Harry repaid the taxpayer .

Neither Harry nor Andrew were ‘working’ royals ( the term working royals is more gaslighting)

Why the different treatment ?

Please link to my post where I accuse QE2 of being a thief! What nonsense, who is twisting words now???

I have said nothing of the sort but all of them, the whole family, work very very hard at enriching themselves. They have significant wealth and they capitalize on it. There are very blurred lines between public and private and that private wealth is as a result of their public roles

I agree that there are significant questions to ask over Andrew’s lease terms. The sims seems very modest for such a grand estate and the length of the lease (which would have extended well beyond his lifetime, tying up a key property so that it couldn’t be used for several subsequent generations).

Andrew and Harry were both ‘working’ royals at the time that each property was handed over, but the arrangements were different. Andrew’s was the unusual one. It does look like the Queen wanted to give him cast iron protection from the property being removed from his possession and that she wanted to make sure he had a deal he could afford. The Crown Estate staff who drew up the contract were too deferent and should have looked after the long term interests of the Crown Estate, not her preferences.

We can all see the difference in treatment between Andrew and Harry no matter what you think of Harry there is no comparison between the two. It speaks volumes about the Windsors and what they value .

Blaming estate staff is a new low .
As if they’d do anything without the say so of the Windsors .

And again it’s not just Andrew who has a peppercorn rent . Edward too by the looks of it . Maybe others too. The whole rip off needs a thorough investigation.

William has had how many ‘forever homes ‘’?
It’s not private money . Cornwall councils have cut services and closed buildings due to lack of funds while William is trousering 25 million and refusing to confirm reveal even the small amount of financial detail that Charles did .

While we're considering surplus royal income maybe we should also be asking why any excess from the SG goes into a reserve fund to be spent on additional royal costs arising rather than being returned to the Treasury.

Some costs relating to both the Jubilee and the Coronation were met this way. Why can't the royals pay for their own knees-ups?!

And again it’s not just Andrew who has a peppercorn rent . Edward too by the looks of it . Maybe others too. The whole rip off needs a thorough investigation.

Agree entirely.

Harry benefited from a deal cut on the 'repayment' that saved him some £750k and thus indirectly cost the public purse its percentage.

An explanation as to how a seedy associate of MW came to be occupying a CE Mayfair flat apparently rent free wouldn't come amiss either.

I've been asking about the nature of Edward's arrangements for years.

Delighted the ex prince affair is finally getting a spotlight shone in murky corners.

Woo-hoo! Maybe someone in the Commons Public Accounts Committee reads Mumsnet! 😉

Editorial comment in today’s Guardian:

“This week, the Commons public accounts committee announced an inquiry into the crown estate. The probe is a direct response to news that the disgraced former Prince Andrew (now Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor) and his brother Prince Edward have been paying “peppercorn rents” for very extensive properties owned by the estate. It is an extremely unusual move in the modern era.”

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/dec/04/the-guardian-view-on-the-crown-estate-inquiry-a-necessary-probe-and-a-wider-debate

She ensured that the finances of the RF took precedence. Let's put it that way

Who is MW?

I agree

But I do hope that this isnt another instance of ‘distract from the king and the heir’.

ALL of them need a proper investigation .

Why the hell is the medieval bullshit of the Duchys being above tax law still allowed in 2025 ? Haven’t the Windsors amassed enough from us already ?

And for those who say they submit accounts - they do but only after they themselves have decided what they’ll declare . And William has stopped offering even the limited information that Charles did !

MPs on the public accounts committee asked for more information decades ago -and were ignored- in fact over 100 years ago MPs wanted the Duchy rip off stopped

They need to change the name from crown estate to national estate

Maybe that will help the hard of thinking who repeat the lie that the royals share their money with us- it’s the other way round . And always has been .

Mountbatten-Windsor

And for those who say they submit accounts - they do but only after they themselves have decided what they’ll declare .

Polo pony costs claimed as a business expense anybody?