Secrets of the Queen's spending

The Queen costs each of her subjects around 58p a year, fascinating figures released today by Buckingham Palace reveal.

The figures come in a report which explains for the first time how the monarch spends taxpayers' money, showing an increase in expenditure for 2001 from £34.9 million to £35.3 million, a rise of one per cent.

The report reveals that the Queen has been sending second-class post for the first time to save cash. She has also cut her drinks bill by over £100,000 as part of a drive to reduce the amount of taxpayers' money she spends. The savings helped reduce the cost to the taxpayer of the royal family by 1.3 per cent in real terms. Since 1991 the Queen's expenditure as head of state has fallen by 58%.

Sir Michael Peat, Keeper of the Privy Purse, who heads up the Queen's finances, said: "The publication of annual Civil List accounts completes a series of royal household-annual reports which describe all expenditure of public money for which the royal household is responsible. The rise is due to fire precautions work at Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh."

Since running the court post office itself, the Palace says it has made considerable savings. One of those was to send the Queen's mail by second class for the first time. Sir Michael said: "It is the first time we have used the second-class post but it is only used for not time critical mail."

But he insisted that letters to the public, some 49,000, were still sent first-class. The overall cost of the court post office was still £690,000. They also made savings with the drinks bill for the royal household which was reduced from £175,000 to £45,000.

He said the household was still using the same amount of alcohol for banquets and entertaining but the cost had been reduced because effectively they "stock up" and did not need to buy as much this last year. The Queen also made £5,000 savings in costs because her staff were more careful with her crockery.

Last year the Palace spent £11,000 on breakages but that figure dropped to £6,000.