Should the Royal Family have to declare gifts

[Polka83]

I would be interested in people thoughts. Should the royal family have to declare gifts made by other states?

There is a Guardian article which says royal family agreed to declare gifts received over the last 4 years but they have failed to do so.

I understand that the royals will receive gifts from friends which don’t need to be declared, but what about gifts from other heads of states? It is unlikely that these gifts would come to the royals if they were commoners.

There are strict rules in how the royals should handle these gifts and if they belong to the state rather than personally by individual royals. For example, the Duchess of Sussex got £500,000 earrings from Saudi Arabia. How can we check if these rules are being followed unless they declare them?

https://amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/oct/12/buckingham-palace-published-list-official-gifts-royal-family-king-charles

This is what “official gifts” are-
What are official gifts?
Official gifts are those received by the family in connection with their official duties, or those sent in by businesses or individuals they do not personally know. They include those received from officials or dignitaries, such as other heads of state or elected representatives, during state visits or other official functions. They are not the family members’ private property.
Official gifts cannot be sold or traded. They can be worn or used by members of the royal family, or placed on public display in palaces. Items given to the monarch from another head of state or government automatically become part of the royal collection, an institution set up to manage the country’s royal heritage. Otherwise, they go into storage.

With the scrutiny given to the MPs about gifts that they receive - should we expect our royals to also be above reproach and declare their gifts?

amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/apr/07/what-are-the-rules-on-gifts-for-the-royal-family

Politicians need to declare so there is transparency and to avoid conflict of interest.

The Royals are obviously in a different position so not sure what the conflict is.

They generally do declare gifts

The Guardian does follow up as far as possible (something that they've been doing for years) and though they have found some delays in getting items added formally to The Royal Collection (ie belong to The Crown, not to individuals) there's next to nothing that's gone astray.

Because they are, almost without exception, already declaring gifts.

Though of course sleazy Andrew really did look to the very edges of the rules (which allow more expensive gifts to be retained personally on the occasion of a wedding). But I hope he and his lack of standards will never be repeated (and that he stays firmly out of sight except a handful of family occasions from which he cannot be excluded)

I am not saying that there would be a conflict of interest.

These are the rules and the gifts should belong to the state. How can we check that the gifts are going into the royal collection belonging to the state unless they declare them?

Imagine saying that we were too busy to do our tax return or that COVID prevented us from doing it?

The article says they haven’t done it for the last 4 years though.

A spokesperson for Buckingham Palace said: “The royal gifts lists will be published in due course.”

It’s right there at the end of the article. Yes I do think they should declare gifts, I do think they should do so in a timely manner but I also get why they might not have got to publishing it yet.

If the tobacco trade handed a billions to King Chuck, there ain't much he could do.

If the gambling businesses hand millions to the government, the government could alter their stances and view points on some gambling legislation and laws.

If one shit heap gives a load to the other shit heaps, they can steer everyone in the country directly into the shit.

How can it take 4 years to do it? It’s not like they don’t have support to track the gifts?

It’s not about conflict of interest. It’s about following rules about declaring gifts.
The late queen made a member of the royal family donate money to charity after they sold official gifts.

What happened to the half-a-mill earrings?

They initially said that they were “borrowed” before eventually revealing they were given as a gift when she wore them again in public. Who knows what happened to them!

Isn’t that the point of declaring gifts - so we can track what happens to them?

So it depends if the guardian is simply talking about revealing the list of gifts by publishing it on the royal.uk website which is where the lists have been situated before 2020 or if there is an official list where everything is declared that is available to government oversight (similar to the government oversight of the sovereign grant accounts).

The royal.uk website has been very slow to update on a lot of things since Covid and even more so since the Queen died.

But they should definitely be recording all gifts over a certain amount of money and those records should be available to be viewed by the public. For at least the monarch and the heir, and anyone on a royal tour or engagement.

If you look at some of the older lists it's hilarious how much stuff they get handed to them by the public on royal engagements and they record every single item - there are things like cardigans or handbags, photo frames, lots of books, lots of children's clothes. I hope most of these items are recycled to people in need. Although I suppose they can't record that as people would be upset that they are giving away their gifts.

@wordler
That’s so sweet how they get handed gifts like children’s clothing. Does show how much they are loved. I would think, and hope, gifts like these which are not used are given to those in need.

Says all we need to know

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/apr/14/official-jewellery-gifts-to-royals-worth-80m-are-not-in-national-collection

I don't know whether I'm misreading the article or not, but my reading of it is that the journalist is querying why the items are not in The Royal Collection. All the articles are known about (so have been declared), but specific items are not currently housed within the RC. Presumably because they are housed within certain Palaces and are being worn at certain events.

Seems like a typical Guardian stirring the pot article. Creating issues where none actually are for clicks.

Edit: that's in response to the article posted by @BustingBaoBun

No.

Yes. I couldn’t quite see what the point the article was trying to make was 🤷‍♀️

If these articles should be put in the Royal Collection but are not and are kept for personal use, my point is.... think what we don't know about that hasn't been declared.
I really wouldn't call it guardian stirring the pot? Does that mean we should never look into anything the royals do?

Palace officials have blamed the pandemic, the change in reign, the coronation for their inability to declare gifts. That's just excuses, the last gifts list was published in 2019.

That Guardian article is, as others have said, looking to make a story out of nothing here. The Nizam Hyderabad necklace mentioned in the article is owned by the Royal Collection Trust - it appears on the Trust’s website (link below) which catalogues much, though not all, of the collection. The necklace was also credited as a loan from the Royal Collection in the recent Platinum Jubilee exhibition of QEII’s jewels. So the Guardian’s headline is misleading - this jewel is “in” the national collection.

The article states however that the Royal Collection Trust does not have custody of the 11 jewels. Presumably, since The Nizam of Hyderabad necklace has been recently worn, that means they in the group of jewels that are available to currently be worn, which I guess means held within the vaults at Buckingham palace that Harry told us about in Spare. Which sounds sensible from a security perspective. Some of the jewels worn by the Danish Queen are on display in a museum on Copenhagen when not being worn, and have to be transported to the Palace when they are needed, which seems a definite security risk!

So ownership yes, current custody, no. The Guardian doesn’t tell us (why would it - it doesn’t help its story) but I imagine that the jewels held in the Palace vaults are catalogued and signed in and out, so it’s unlikely that there’s any uncertainty about their whereabouts. In reality therefore - hot air over nothing.

As for the rest of the exam question - yes, the Royal family staff needs to deal with the backlog and publish the gift lists for the last 5 years. Their past performance on this issue however suggests that this is a task they do take seriously though, so for the moment I ‘ see it as anything sinister indication.

https://www.rct.uk/collection/exhibitions/platinum-jubilee-the-queens-accession/buckingham-palace/the-queens-nizam-of-hyderabad-and-berar-necklace

Is The Guardian attempting to distract attention from this shitshow government? This seems weak.

Not with that article. It’s flagged as over 12 months old 😆

yes, the Royal family staff needs to deal with the backlog and publish the gift lists for the last 5 years

Lers see how much longer they take.

It’s an article that has been posted previously and discussed by a previous poster who appears to no longer post under that name. I don’t know why. But look - now a different named poster has dug up the same article.

Tbf the last four years have seen quite a few unusual circumstances. We had the pandemic, the death of the late Queen and consequently a new monarch which inevitably involves some upheaval, the monarch being diagnosed with cancer and subsequently the heir to the throne’s wife the same. There is probably always a bit of a backlog in cataloguing gifts and no doubt this was exacerbated by these circumstances. If everything down to children’s clothing and cardigans is being catalogue, I’m not surprised they are somewhat behind 🤷‍♀️

Should they declare gifts? Yes.

Do they declare gifts? Yes.

Is there anything sinister in the backlog of publishing the lists? I don't think so.

Just going by the length of time it takes the palace to update the website, which is literally a two minute job, it is obvious that updating this sort of thing for public view is not a priority. They log the gifts at the time, it's just the rest of the process that seems to lag.

I'm sure there have been other priorities in the last 4 years. But going forward I hope the King does something about the length of time it seems to take the palace beaurocracy to do anything. It isn't appropriate for the 21st century and in a computer age it shouldn't take 4 years to log gifts onto one spreadsheet and transfer them onto the next appropriate spreadsheet.

So yes The Guardian is stirring (I suspect they are deeply disappointed that Charles is more popular than they expected) but the palace is giving them an open goal here that needs filling in.