Gosh , they don't look well.

[fedup33]

With the exection of Sophis in blue and B's husband, I'm sorry but the Royals look ill and sad. It's a shame.

if they aren’t doing engagements then the Sovereign Grant gets used less and money goes back into the pot. They don’t get to keep the excess and use it for themselves

So they use it all. And the SG can never ever go down. Is that no strange given Covid, less Royals working etc?

But the sovereign grant gets spent. And it does not reduce if they do less. Look at 2019/20. 4% more grant than the year before, engagements because of the pandemic, and it was all spent.

But it is less if they do fewer engagements - if they’d done more in the year in question then they would have overspent the initial amount which would then have been topped up by the surplus amount.

In this respect it’s very different from the Civil List - this is the only bit I’m arguing about here - not the efficiency or management of the SG in total.

It’s specifically that in the Civil List for example Sophie would have been given £200K for the year - like a wage and she’d have used that for living expenses plus work expenses. In those days she could have done 200 engagements and spent a lot on work expenses or she could have done 20 engagements and pocketed all the money left over.

Now her ‘wage’ is provided privately by the King on whatever arrangement they have, and work expenses (travel, admin and staff) are covered by the SG - so she does 20 engagements it costs the SG x amount - she does 200 engagements it costs the SG x amount. Neither Sophie or the King profits from her reducing her engagements.

If the funds in the SG are being managed badly then I’m all for holding the overseeing government department accountable until they do something about it.

Important to remember that an "engagement" can be a phone call or a 20 minute meeting......

Yes, but they are engagements none the less. A barrister will bill a client for a 2 minute phone call and a quick email as well as a week in court. Just because something is short it doesn't mean it's not work. My working day can often be built around lots of short communications /interactions. Should I not be paid?

So anything left unspent in the SG goes into the reserve - Charles doesn’t get to pocket it.

Any excess amount is still reserved for 'unexpected' royal expenditure rather than being spent for the benefit of the nation. Some £20m (£20m!) of the reserve was used to pay towards TLQ's funeral and Charles's subsequent extravangantly expensive party day which was a disgraceful waste of scarce resources.

@wordler The Royal family spent the full amount of the sovereign grant in 2019/20. They spent £69.4 million, £2.4 million more than in 2018/9.
The number of engagements was way less in 2019/20 than other years. This is unsurprising as there was the small matter of a pandemic and lockdowns.

The amount received and spent does not reduce related to the number of engagements.

But this is my point - the SG pays for a variety of things and expenses related to engagements is just a small part.

People always seem to bring it up as though fewer engagements mean ‘they’ are getting money for doing nothing.

But ‘they’ on a personal level don’t get any financial benefit from doing fewer engagements. Individuals in the royal family don’t get paid from the SG.

Whereas with the Civil List they were getting paid a specific amount that they could choose to use for engagements as they saw fit.

@wordler you are the person who said if they do fewer engagements, they spend less money. That is not true.
Money is spent on fixed costs like staff and utilities for their many palaces. But money is also spent on clothes for engagements, travel and catering for receptions and state dinners. So there should be a reduction in costs.

No I said if they had done more engagements then even more money would have been spent.

If they do fewer engagements then less money is spent on engagements. But it doesn’t benefit the individuals. They don’t get to keep any extra money.

Look I’m not discussing the management of the whole SG - I’ve not done a deep enough dive across the accounting from different years to have a fully formed opinion on whether the Lord Chamberlain’s Committee which provides oversight and accounting on how the SH is used have been doing a good job.

I’ve been talking specifically about the concept that gets thrown out on here a LOT that the ‘royal family’ are pocketing the cash that is meant for doing engagements if they end up doing fewer and that’s just not true.

People talk like it’s the Windsor clan who get handed the whole sovereign grant and divy it up amongst themselves. It’s an expenses fund and is monitored very closely by the government. It mostly gets spent on the upkeep of buildings owned by the country and entertaining and events requested by the government or for the invited public.

Of course there’s loads to be said about how the constitutional monarchy is funded and everyone has different opinions but it’s frustrating to try discuss is among the misconceptions people have between how the civil list used to work and now.

@wordler Proof please that it is monitored closely? I see zero evidence of that. And the expenditure increased in 2019/20 over the previous year, even though they did less engagements because of the pandemic. There is no relationship between engagements and expenditure.

It is not true that it is simply expenses. It pays for the maintenance, utilities and catering of the many palaces the Royals live in. It also pays for their many staff. Staff to help them get dressed, nannies, staff to make their meals, clean their clothes, keep their gardens looking nice, personal trainers, swimming pools, etc etc.

I never said it was only for expenses - my point is it’s only used like an expense account for the individuals within the royal family who take part in official duties for their engagements - they don’t get handed a check to do what they want with - the money is spent and accounted for for each engagement.

You keep saying ‘they’ - others when they complain about it say ‘the royal family’ are spending this money.

Their nannie’s? Who are you talking about.

William and Kate pay for all their living expenses from Duchy of Cornwall. And did so before when Charles was the one giving them the allowance for that.

The wider family has no access to the SG - it’s for managing the day to day work of the Head of State.

The staff paid for in the SG are for official business and official Crown palaces. The Duchy of Lancaster and the Duchy of Cornwall covers the private residences and staff and for any ‘wages’ / allowances paid directly to members of the royal family.

@wordler do you work for the Royal Family? I ask as I wonder how you know exactly what the Duchies pay for given William has refused to publish proper accounts of how the money is spent?

And for Charles and William maintenance costs of their many palaces and utilities is alone a hefty personal expense that the sovereign grant pays for.

And refused to disclose how much tax he has paid on his £26 million.
His father did.

I don’t work for the royal family - I’m just interested in how these things work and as I’ve said in previous occasions I’m pro a constitutional monarchy for our parliamentary model but I’m always interested in more financial transparency and also open to debate on costs and how things are spent.

Re your point earlier about the SG accounts being monitored - they are audited every way by the National audit office.

No idea about William but I used to read the reports Charles put out each year. And the Duchy of Cornwall was created to fund the heir and his family. So unless William has another source of income I am assuming he’s using it to fund his household as his father did before him.

The private properties - Sandringham, Balmoral, etc aren’t included in the SG so I am assuming the Duchy of Lancaster is funding those.

But they aren’t ‘their’ palaces - they belong to the country and are used by the head of state and for state occasions requested by the government.

I get it, you don’t want a monarchy - but the people you need to target are the elected government representatives who approve and run the system we have. Who audit the accounts. Who approve the funding.

Anyway for those interested here’s last year’s financial report for the Sovereign Grant.

www.royal.uk/sites/default/files/documents/2024-07/Sovereign%20Grant%20Report%202023-24.pdf

I get it, you don’t want a monarchy - but the people you need to target are the elected government representatives who approve and run the system we have. Who audit the accounts. Who approve the funding.

We try, believe me. But when a lot is shrouded in secrecy, when the media kowtows to the royals, and whatever government is in doesn't want to rock the boat, it's impossible.

But that’s why - for me - arguments from Republic don’t feel effective.

It’s always focused on ‘the royals’ / ‘the royal family’ / ‘the Windsors’ as if they are the issue.

I get that it’s a tactic to try to make the monarchy seem unappealing but the ‘family’ isn’t in charge and isn’t what we pay for.

We pay for a monarch to represent us as head of state.

Attacking the individuals just comes across as jealousy of rich people.

I want to see positive alternatives for a better option as head of state sold to me - that’s how I would move towards the republican side.

I understand that.

But surely you must understand how hard it is to kick back against the status quo.

Individuals in the royal family don’t get paid from the SG.

They have however been paid in addition.

Even after the Civil List was supplanted, Philip was allowed to trouser an 'annuity' of £360K per year right up to his death. Some £3.6m over ten years.

No wonder that will got sealed...

Yes - from memory wasn’t it both Phillip and the Queen Mum who got to keep their ‘wage’?

I do agree that was a bad decision - it’s not as though the Queen couldn’t have paid him from the Duchy of Lancaster.

It’s always focused on ‘the royals’ / ‘the royal family’ / ‘the Windsors’ as if they are the issue.

You talk as if they're powerless victims of a benevolent government insisting on showering them with unwanted cash.

They can and do change the system if they want to. See Charles graciously handing back millions for 'the wider good' deriving from the £billion he's set to make on licences on stolen seabeds.

Still not stopping his wallet benefitting from a cool £45m.

Brexit shows that it is not.

But I don 't see a popular movement kicking back on this issue. The arguments I see (on MN, at least) are largely at the level of ad hominem mutterings about the individuals - 'lazy' W & K and 'weak' Charles - instead of arguments for reform of the system that put and keeps them there.