There have been growing calls for an end to royal secrecy in recent months, with historians, campaigners and journalists demanding greater access to the official records of the UK’s head of state. That secrecy has been compared unfavourably to MI5, with the royals having an absolute exemption from the Freedom of Information Act while squirrelling away thousands of official records in their archives in Windsor.
There is a reason why the monarchy is more secretive than our security services: it has plenty to hide. It is not unreasonable to conclude that the institution is corrupt, if corruption is the abuse of public office for personal gain. Whether it’s using tens of millions of pounds each year to cover costs such as travel or palatial homes, or lobbying the government in pursuit of their private interests or political agendas, the royals exploit their status and position week in, week out.
To the list of charges we can also add breathtaking dishonesty. In collusion with the palace, the government announced on Thursday that there would be a change in the calculation for determining the size of the sovereign grant, the official funding for the royal household. In a bit of spin that would put Malcolm Tucker to shame, it issued a statement that gave the very strong impression that the grant itself would be cut, while the truth is that it will probably go up by 45%, or nearly £40m, in 2025.
It said that the sovereign grant would “be 12% of the crown estate’s net profits next year, down from 25%”, and that “as a result, the royal household’s budget will be £24m lower next year and £130m lower in both 2025 and 2026, than if the rate remained at 25%”. That suggested cut, which was nothing of the sort, became the initial headline of the story. Further down the statement, the government explained that “the total sovereign grant for 2024/25 will remain flat at £86.3m”. So no cut at all. Nowhere in the government’s statement did it explain that in fact, set at the equivalent 12% of crown estate profits, the grant would jump from £86m next year to £126m in 2026.
This barefaced dishonesty from the palace and government is nothing new. They continue to imply that the sovereign grant is some kind of exchange for the revenues from the crown estate, giving the impression that the estate’s profits are the king’s to give to the nation. The palace issued a statement in the run-up to the coronation, saying that King Charles wanted to ensure that the profits of the crown estate were used for the “public good”, again giving the impression those profits were generously given to a country that should be grateful for his largesse, not concerned about his abuse of public funds. And this dishonesty of the palace is muddying the waters when it comes to discussions about the monarchy and, in particular, its funding.
The crown estate is not the personal property of Charles Mountbatten-Windsor. The crown estate says it is the property of the monarchy “by right of the crown”, but this jargon simply means it belongs to the crown, a state institution, not to Charles, a private individual. It is often commented on that, at the start of their reign, the new monarch surrenders the crown estate revenue in exchange for government funding, as Charles did at the accession council shortly after his mother’s death last September. Yet this is pure theatre. He has no more claim to own the crown estate than Rishi Sunak has to own the flat above 10 Downing Street.
The same is true of the Duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall. The palace claims these are “private estates”, when they are crown properties that originate from the same crown lands as the crown estate. This point about the status of crown lands has been well documented over the past 200 years, not least in parliamentary debates going back to the time of Edward VII and Victoria. As recently as 1972 there were questions raised in parliament as to whether these portfolios should continue to provide an income to the monarch and heir. Spencer Walpole, a 19th-century historian and politician, argued very clearly that the “surrender” of the crown estate was irreversible, while the professor Edward Freeman, writing during Victoria’s reign, said the surrender was “a custom as strong as law”.
The truth is that the monarchy is deceiving the public about its income, funding and wealth. The crown estate does not belong to the royal family, and it doesn’t provide the funding for the monarchy. It has only been since 2011 that the size of the grant is pegged to the estate’s profits. Yet for all the sense that makes you could just as easily peg the grant to the profits of McDonald’s or easyJet. The funding will still come from the government – a government that insists it can’t provide cost-of-living wage increases for nurses or crucial support for families with more than two children. The sovereign grant doesn’t cover the full cost of the monarchy, with estimates by Republic putting the total bill at more than £345m. Yet that figure will continue to rise for as long as the secrecy and dishonesty persists. And that should be a source of deep shame for all those involved, not least King Charles.
Graham Smith is CEO of Republic and the author of Abolish the Monarchy: Why We Should and How We Will
