by Elliot Keck, head of campaigns
We were hoping that we would never need to mention Prince Andrew, the disgraced royal, in any TPA communications, but given the extent of news coverage over his living arrangements and the clear taxpayer implications, we thought it worth explaining exactly what is going on.
What has been revealed in recent days is that Andrew does not, and never has, paid rent on his accommodation at Royal Lodge, in Windsor, which he leases from the Crown Estate. It’s not quite the case he was granted the place for free. He had to pay £1 million upfront and £7.5 million on what were urgently needed renovations. That is a significant amount of money, but certainly is nowhere near enough to cover the 75 year lease which he was granted.
Since then though he has only paid a “peppercorn” in rent (“peppercorn” being a technical term, meaning essentially that it is free).
But if he was paying rent, it wouldn’t be directly to the Treasury, or to the government, which does not own Royal Lodge. Instead it goes to the Crown Estate.
This is where it gets slightly complicated. The Crown Estate is a collection of lands and holdings in the United Kingdom belonging to the British Monarch. But as the Crown Estate makes clear, this does not make it the private property of the King. Instead “Our assets are hereditary possessions of the Sovereign held ‘in right of the Crown’. This means they belong to the Sovereign for the duration of their reign, but cannot be sold by them, nor do revenues from the assets belong to them.” Nor is it owned by the UK government.
It dates back to 1760, when George III handed over land and property to the government, with the revenue going to the treasury. In return the treasury gave the sovereign a fixed salary. The situation is broadly similar now. The monarch receives an income with that income set as a percentage of the annual net income of the Crown Estate.
All that is to say that it is not the case that taxpayers are directly missing out from Prince Andrew’s arrangements. However, by reducing the Crown Estate’s income (potentially quite significantly), that will thereby reduce the amount of money going to the treasury. So even if indirectly, taxpayers do lose out.
Now the TPA does not take an institutional position on the monarchy in principle, although we are of course admirers of the public duty and commitment of many members of the royal family. But surely, with Andrew having disgraced himself, threatened the reputation of the institution of the royal family, and now no longer performing any royal duties, his ability to access a property of the Crown Estate should surely come to an end. Whether taxpayers lose out directly or indirectly does not seem to matter a great deal.
As shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick said, “I don't see why the taxpayer, frankly, should continue to foot the bill at all. The public are sick of him.”