The Queen
is facing a tough inquiry into her finances and expenses by the most powerful
watchdog in government, it emerged last night.
The Telegraph, Richard Alleyne, 09 Feb 2013
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| In April Buckingham Palace will receive £36.1m to fund the Queen’s official duties, a 16 per cent increase on the £31m paid by taxpayers last year. Photo: GETTY |
The Public
Accounts Committee is expected to launch an investigation into whether the
monarch and the Royal Family provide value for money to the taxpayer.
The
inquiry, which will look at every aspect of the Queen’s expenditure including
the cost of transport, is likely to cause concern in Buckingham Palace because
of the PAC’s reputation for grilling civil servants if it deems they have
misused public funds.
The Queen’s
closest aides can expect a particularly rough ride by MPs about whether the
Royal Family is providing value for taxpayers’ money.
The amount
of public funds going to the Royal Family soared last year, despite Government
cuts.
The
investigation follows a change in the law which, for the first time, gives MPs
oversight of royal finances.
The PAC,
chaired by the former Labour minister Margaret Hodge, will decide on the scope
of any inquiry after the National Audit Office is granted access to the Queen’s
finances next month, according to a report in the Independent.
Auditors
will produce a report on their findings which will then be scrutinised by the
committee who will decide whether to call palace officials to give evidence.
Committee
sources indicated that this was likely to happen.
“Margaret
wants to do it – but obviously it’s got to be a decision of the whole
committee,” a source told the newspaper.
“I’m all in
favour of it,” said Austin Mitchell, a Labour MP who sits on the committee.
“It’s not intrusive. It is about ensuring that the public are getting good
value for money.
“At the
moment there is no accountability for spending what is a considerable fortune.”
Among the
areas the committee is expected to examine are transport costs including the
Royal Train and the Royal Flight, as well as money spent on official
entertaining and the upkeep of palaces.
Money given
to junior royals to support their work backing up the Queen will also be
scrutinised while the committee may also want to examine whether Buckingham
Palace is doing enough to raise money itself by selling the royal brand.
For example
while Buckingham Palace now opens to paying visitors during the summer some
have argued it should be open all year round.
Two of the
Queen’s other castles, Balmoral and Sandringham, have no public access at all –
despite their multimillion-pound maintenance costs.
The change
has come about after George Osborne scrapped the Civil List – an annual handout
to the Royal Family that has had to be approved by Parliament since 1760 – in
favour of paying the Monarch 15 per cent of the income from the Crown Estates
as a new “Sovereign Grant”.
Crown
Estate assets include Regent Street in London, Ascot racecourse and Windsor
Great Park, 265,000 acres of farmland, as well as ownership of our national
seabed stretching out 12 nautical miles around Britain.
The
Estate’s profits have been paid to the Treasury and taxpayers since 1760, after
George III handed the Crown’s property to the state in return for an annual fee
to support his duties.
In April
Buckingham Palace will receive £36.1m to fund the Queen’s official duties, a 16
per cent increase on the £31m paid by taxpayers last year.
 |
| The Queen was asked for consent on a range of bills, including those affecting her estates. There is growing concern in parliament at a lack of transparency over the royals’ role in lawmaking. Photograph: Sergeant Dan Harmer |
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