Civil List

Margaret Hodge Excerpts

Thursday 30th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Margaret Hodge (Barking) (Lab)]

I join others in welcoming today’s announcement and the motion put forward by the Chancellor with the agreement of the royal household. Like others, I recognise the fantastic contribution that the Queen and members of the royal family make to the United Kingdom, and acknowledge the respect and warmth that the Queen commands among the British people. Most recently, as others have said, the royal wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge gave us all an uplifting moment of joy, allowing us to celebrate with the royal family on an occasion filled with happiness at a time when so many families are facing difficulties and insecurity in their daily lives.

Clearly, if the Queen and the royal family are to carry out their constitutional duties effectively, they need appropriate funding. Some of this funding comes from the taxpayer, so we need to have in place an open and accountable system. The Chancellor’s announcement today puts the direct support from the taxpayer to the royal family on a transparent footing, which will enable both Parliament and the public to understand how much taxpayer money is being spent annually by the royal family and what it is being spent on. This is undoubtedly an important change for the better, and as Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, charged with following the taxpayer’s pound, I warmly welcome it.

I also recognise the historic significance of the changes proposed, and believe it is hugely important for the future stability of the monarchy and its role in our constitutional settlement that we should modernise our structures so that they are fit for purpose in today’s world, and properly meet the legitimate expectations of the taxpayer and the general public. As others have acknowledged, the Queen has acted sensitively and prudently in managing her finances over the past two decades. That is right and proper, and she should be applauded for doing so. She has cut her real-terms expenditure by more than 50% in the past 20 years, and at a time when we are asking every family to tighten their belts, people will be heartened to see that she is playing her part.

The powers proposed in the legislation, as outlined by the Chancellor, are hugely significant for Parliament. The Comptroller and Auditor General will be appointed by statute to audit the sovereign grant accounts and he will be empowered to prepare value for money reports that the PAC can consider. This puts, for the first time, those parts of the royal finances that come directly from the taxpayer each year on a transparent basis, consistent with other public expenditure. The PAC has a long and well-established history of effective public scrutiny, and we will, I am sure, approach these new responsibilities in our traditional way, working objectively and thoroughly on behalf of Parliament and the taxpayer.

We will show no fear or favour. On the one hand, we will not give this new area of our work special treatment, but on the other hand, we will take the issues seriously and ensure that we hold the appropriate accounting officers to proper public account. In our approach, we will examine critically both how the Government allocate funding to the royal family and how the royal family then spend that allocation. As right hon. and hon. Members know, we have a reputation for being straightforward, direct and clear in our recommendations, and I hope that both the Chancellor and the royal household will welcome the new accountabilities and the implications for them. You never know, Mr Deputy Speaker, we might, in years ahead, end up praising the royal household for providing value for money and criticising the Treasury for its meanness. Time will tell.

In this instance, I expect us to take evidence from the Keeper of the Privy Purse and Treasurer to the Queen, Sir Alan Reid. Although the incorporation of the civil list into the new sovereign grant gives us new powers, with new audit and access rights for the Comptroller and Auditor General and new areas for public scrutiny of this expenditure by Parliament, the PAC has in the past examined areas of expenditure by the royal household covered by the grant for royal travel from the Department of Transport and the grant aid for the royal palaces from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

As the Chancellor said, in 2010, £5.4 million was granted for royal travel and £15 million for aid to royal palaces. When the PAC reported on the occupied royal palaces in 2008-09 we found that, although the royal household claimed a £32 million backlog of maintenance work, that figure was not supported by rigorous analysis. We said then that in the absence of a consistent approach to assessing the condition of the Crown Estate and calculating the backlog, and without an assessment of the practical consequences of the backlog, the Department and the household could not be sure how big the problem was or what to do about it. We said that the household should define the criteria for inspecting the condition of the estate, agree with the Department the basis for calculating the maintenance backlog and, before the end of 2009, set out a plan for managing it.

As a result of that recommendation, the household adopted a new system for monitoring the condition of its estate to better manage prioritisation of the maintenance work. In the same report, we noted that the Royal Collection Trust received more than £27 million from visitors to the occupied royal palaces, of which just £1.8 million was passed to the royal household to top up the resources available to maintain the palaces. The report found that the arrangement by which money paid by visitors to the palaces went to fund the trust dated from 1850. Clearly times have changed. More palaces have opened to the public and hundreds of thousands of tourists visit them each year, yet only a fraction of the income generated has, in the past, been used to maintain the palaces. The amount paid to the household is at the discretion of the trust, but some staff of the household are also involved with the trust and have potential conflicts of interest.

We said that the Department should work with the household and the trust to revise the arrangements for the collection and distribution of visitor income to reflect the fact that visitors come to see the palaces as well as the works of art in them. In response, the royal household announced a new arrangement under which, in 2009-10, the trust started paying an amount to the royal household in respect of visitors to Buckingham palace, which again helps offset public funding.

To give another example, following a visit by the then Public Accounts Committee to Kensington palace on the back of a report on maintaining royal palaces, the Queen agreed to pay rent—initially £60,000 a year, rising to £120,000 a year—for the Prince and Princess of Kent’s apartment at Kensington palace from her own income. We understand that from 2010 the Prince and Princess of Kent will remain at their apartment but will pay the rent from their own funds.

Those have been our past successes. In future, we might well want to look at a new range of issues, such as whether the royal estate is being used in the most cost-effective and efficient way, with the royal household maximising the potential for income from commercial lettings, and whether maintenance work is being properly prioritised given the backlog. On travel, we might also look at the cost-effectiveness of the options chosen by the royal household—for example, between road, rail and air—to ensure that best value for taxpayers’ money is secured.

On the former civil list, we might want to examine procurement, staffing costs or expenditure on receptions and entertainment. Having listened to the Chancellor’s welcome statement, I would appreciate it if he dealt with a number of issues that I believe arise. He has said that the sovereign grant will be reviewed every seven years. As I understand his statement, he will be taking new powers to reduce the sovereign grant year on year if the income from the Crown Estate exceeds his expectations. I understand that such a power does not exist at present and I would be grateful if he confirmed that it will be a new power. A similar issue arises on the income that the royal household receives from opening the palaces and the royal art collection to the public. How in those circumstances will any increase in income be treated in determining the sovereign grant?

Finally, today’s proposals deal with the annual income received by the Queen from the taxpayer, but we need to ensure that the public interest in all the assets and estates held by the monarch on behalf of the public is accounted for in a transparent and consistent way. This is particularly important in these stringent times when we are asking so much from hard-working families. I would be grateful if the Chancellor addressed this issue in his reply.

I warmly welcome today’s announcement by the Chancellor. This is a truly historic occasion. For the first time ever, we are placing the royal expenditure financed by the taxpayer on a proper footing—transparent for all to see and consistent with all other public expenditure. This is a sensible act of modernisation that I am sure will be welcomed by Members on both sides of the House and by the general public at large. It will help to ensure continuing admiration and support for the Queen and for the role she plays in our constitutional arrangements.