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

It's not that simple though is it.

What does the King own because he Head of State?
What did he own because he is the head of a family that has been amassing wealth for centuries (like the rest of the aristocracy)?
What does he own because he meets other Heads of State and they traditionally exchange gifts?
What does he own because he has rich friends who like to exchange gifts?
What did he own because he got married, or had a birthday etc?

Influence, wealth and gifts are not confined to Heads of State (royalty or not). But those who are Heads of State, or members of the government need a rule book. Which the monarchy has.

I would be behind a lobby for a change of the rules if they need tightening up but a blanket, everything you are given needs to be put on display is too simplistic. Plus even the King should be allowed to receive personal gifts.

They already display or loan a lot of items annually, it isn't possible to display it all at once.

@MrsLeonFarrell I agree it's complicated but they do have a whole team to advise them and to work out these issues. Also - they committed to doing this annually, it's now been four years..

I think that once you accept the principal of a Royal Family that has unimaginable wealth, privilege and influence purely because of their bloodline then you cant really expect them to follow normal rules.

I agree it should be done as required. I'm not really surprised though that this ball got dropped in the last 4 years. They should make sure it gets done.

My point to the PP was that they were being far too simplistic. They have a team, they've worked out the rules and the family stick to them (everything is logged they just need to publish the list). Just saying anything given should be publically displayed is several rungs down a ladder a team has already climbed.

I don't really buy the idea that they were just a bit busy.

They aren't doing this stuff personally. They could hire a few more staff if it got too much

I think they are hoping that everyone will forget about it and they can avoid scrutiny

Exactly. Even their stamp collection is worth £100million and there have been many calls from the Royal Philatelic Society over decades to allow the public to be able to view it, or some of it..

there have been sporadic questions about the merits of such a valuable stamp collection being retained “for the eyes of the royal family alone”

And that's just stamps 😂

I suppose we all come at this from how we feel about the monarchy in general.

I am broadly supportive of a constitutional monarchy. I don't find the King or late Queen any less morally upright than any other person in a position of power and far more moral than some.

I think it more than likely that in the confusion of covid, two funerals and an accession with the resultant change in monarch and household staff something as simple as publishing lists of gifts received might get forgotten or downgraded as not urgent.

If I'm shown evidence that they are hiding gifts given to the country for their own personal gain then my response would be very different.

I'm not bothered one way or the other but to mention Government freebies in the same breath was worth a giggle. MPs have to be seen to be unimpeachable and accepting gifts from influential donors without declaring them leads to accusations of bribery and corruption.

Who collected the stamps? If it was passed from individual to individual in the family (and let's face it that family has the wealth to build an amazing collection) then it isn't publically owned and we, the public, can't demand to see it anymore than you can demand to see my father's collection.

It would be lovely to see it displayed. But it isn't something anyone has the right to demand.

I think it was George V's collection of stamps, it was his personal hobby

Exactly. I’m not sure it’s worth the cost of extra staff members to just publish a list of gifts. Especially when many of the gifts are fairly mundane. Wouldn’t it be the taxpayer who ultimately paid for extra staff anyway?

I wonder how many were purchased and how many were simply cut off letters received from relatives!

Exactly!

Apparently (quick Google) parts have regularly been lent for exhibitions, but it hasn't had a curator for the past 5 years so has just been stored.

It is a mixture of passed down and state gifts. BP say it is a private collection but some were gifted on state visits before the policy on gifts was introduced in mid 1990s. And there are arguments that rules should be applied retrospectively. Some were also gifted after.

Well, the government has been pretty busy too - Brexit, COVID, election.. but I think most people would think that was a poor excuse for not bothering with accountability.

So I don't really understand why that's an adequate excuse for the royal family

It's an interesting question. If they applied the rules retrospectively would that set a precedent? I'm not sure if it's a precedent I'd want setting. Would a future government use it to implement rules in other areas retrospectively?

Is it a door worth opening over a stamp collection?

You can't rewrite history.

If Kaiser Wilhelm gave Queen Victoria an expensive broach, for example, there is no.point trying to apply current rules to a context where the Emperor of Germany, ruling in a personal capacity, gave a gift to his grandmother, ruling in a semi-personal/semi-constitutional capacity.

The context is so different it is meaningless.

Just as saying Inheritance Tax should be applied retrospectively - back to when? 1066?

What about criminal law? Should we apply that retrospectively too? If someone did something that wasn't illegal at the time, but the law changes, should we prosecute?

Without getting too political, Brexit, covid etc are a pretty good example of a government that was in no way accountable for bad decisions and which did a terrible job of running the country in the midst of complicated changes.

I agree.

There is also the fact that, in a country without a written constitution, everything is run by precedent, it's not one I'd want set.

I suspect that major cultural institutions - strapped for cash as they are - are happy to be able to borrow items for specific displays without the cost of maintaining the whole collection. But maybe not, maybe there would be e.g. the British Museum willing to take it on.

To fill the gaps of the repatriated items, to set another hare running?! 😂

It's a very grey area... I think the individual Royals decide if it is a personal gift or a State gift. QE2 was given racehorses by Saudi Royals, Dubai Sheikhs but treated them as personal gifts and sold them for millions.
I doubt the late Queen would be given racehorses if she wasn't Queen!

The British Museum has a bit of a track record of things “going missing” though. Things are probably safer in the Royal collections 😆

She probably wouldn't have met them if she wasn't queen. They had a shared interest.

At what point does a business contact become a personal friend?

Many of my personal friends are people I have met at/through work.

I have no.idea of the details of QE2's relationships with Saudi royals, but presumably a head of state also has a continuum of relationships with people they meet through work, from 'polite through gritted teeth' (Trump?!) to personally 'click with' (the Obamas?). And in some cases the 'click with' might become personal friends.

I am not saying 'anything goes', there needs to be rules. But I think it is simplistic not to acknowledge there are grey areas, and relationships don't always fit neatly into categories.

That's true 😂😭😂

People do get given racehorses, without being Queen. The uber wealthy live a totally different life from the rest of us.