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

The bit of respect I used to have for HMQE - flawed though she was, is now gone, kaput, disappeared. I'd laugh in their faces if I ever saw one near me, no exceptions even for those that are considered nice and harmless. Respect is earned. All I'm doing is earning to pay for them!

Absolutely. No subsidies for plebs who want to help the environment by cycling, or by installing heat pumps, but no expense spared for royal travel.

Agreed. Although I have no personal animus against any of them as people, I am saddened to see their greed and apparent self-regard.

Yes, so much of their land and property could be repurposed. Obviously it would be different if they were private citizens- but then they would not be recepients of such huge amounts of taxpayers’ money.

Wills are kept hidden, financial affairs are vague and secretive.
And the true cost of this family is obscene.
They are out for themselves, aiming to maintain and increase their huge wealth. They damage and undermine democracy and live lives of privilege completely unearned and undeserved.

Slimmed-down monarchy will probably mean the central characters taking even more public money for themselves.

Well said.

They do undermine democracy. The presence of a hereditary head of state enshrines inequality at the highest levels of the legislature.

I do think Prince Andrew is an exception rather than the rule, I can’t think of any other royal who has behaved so abysmally in the last one hundred years. Edward vIII wasn’t very pleasant but not a patch on Andrew. I know people who have worked with/around him and not one of them had one good word to say about him, so you do have a point there.

But if the royals are decent, upstanding people (as I’m sure most of them are), they shouldn’t need to be bribed with unimaginably lavish lifestyles to keep them above corruption.

Apologies for being too lazy to check it out myself, but have any of them voluntarily taken a pay cut or donated from their own wealth to something -, anything - in their kingdom? Imagine if KC turned around and said, "ah no, it's ok this year, we know what people are going through with COL and I'd like to donate the 46bn rise to X, Y or Z. I will make up the difference from my own wealth no problem for the good of the nation."

I think there's a project in Scotland, some castle being repurposed for good works or something, but what about a foundation or similar. Giving back....

Maybe they are total philanthropists and it's regularly done, but if so, the PR about their largesse is not very good!

Exactly. Would be great if they were to hand back the money to the government.

I mean, even the queen was at it, grifting, sucking endlessly from the public teat. She used to apply for huge grants from the Forestry Commission for fencing around her private estate at Balmoral in Aberdeenshire, for example. Just disgraceful.

Well... QE2 requested a poverty grant to heat the palaces and it was explained that the handouts were aimed at schools, hospitals, councils and housing associations for heating programmes that benefited low-income families.

And the late queen and Charles lobbied ministers for favourable tax treatment on their vast private estates.
The pandora papers also showed they both had millions in tax efficient offshore trusts, some money invested in morally questionable areas.
such greed is offensive.

Wow!! 😱

It shows horrible entitlement. However, the blame lies with the government for failing to rein in the greed.

I suppose though, if they did hand the rise back it would reinforce the idea that they don't need it at all. That's out of the question then.

Yes

I thought the uplift was because the estates have earned more not because they had asked for it? Or is it because of Buckingham Palace renovations?

@charliehungerford

Have you heard about bags of cash and /or cash for honours ?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-61941113#:~:text=The%20Prince%20of%20Wales%20accepted,department%20store%20Fortnum%20and%20Mason.

Yes, it’s because of crown estate profits. The Crown Estate is a government resource, and royal funding is provided from it. There are some excellent explanations further upthread.
There’s also a post which explains how the royals hated the annual civil list debate, which was part of the process of allocating royal family funding . Consequently David Cameron and George Osborne created a new system whereby the royals received government funding from the Crown Estate.

Well yes, which is why it would be nice to see Rachel Reeves taking action. She seems to be applying rigorous scrutiny to areas of government spending which affect the public, and yet the royal expenditure appears mysteriously off-limits.

Yes, that’s correct. The crown estate income is a government resource, and since David Cameron’s time as PM, some of it is used for royal funding. The issue is that its revenues are used for government expenditure. That extra £46 million which is currently earmarked for a royal pay rise could be used by many more deserving and needy recipients than the royal family.

It seems that the money was for the then POW charities, but I agree that is suspect. The point I was making is that it’s very unlikely that the Monarch would be open to corruption due to their huge wealth. We have seen far too much corruption in government in recent years, free holidays, clothing, hospitality etc, I like to think that our head of state was above this, the late queen certainly appeared to be.

Only if we decrease UC payments by the same percentage.
The Royal family work hard and whilst privileged have little personal freedom.
They bring tourism and revenue to this country and are our representatives overseas.
Unlike the 9 million + benefit claimants who also claim tax payer money but do nothing of any use for the country.