Because we're worth it

Apartment 1A. It sounds such a simple address. Plain, even. But it is causing some rather well-known people rather a lot of bother. The release of the latest accounts for the Royal Family (for the year to 31 March) has revealed that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are spending up to £4.5m doing up 1A Kensington Palace, their new home in London. That’s more than 20 times the price of the average home in Britain.

Rooms — there are 20 — are being knocked together and new rooms created, notably a ‘private, family’ kitchen, even though there is already a 350sq ft kitchen designed by Lord Snowdon, the ex-husband of the late Princess Margaret, the last occupant of 1A. ‘Two kitchens Kate’, the papers now call the Duchess. It’s a far cry from the everyday image the couple tried to create when they married, hiring mini-buses instead of limousines to ferry guests to and from the wedding service.

The Duchess of Cambridge is not the only member of the Royal Family to attract criticism following publication of the latest accounts. The Queen, the figures show, will receive a five per cent rise in public funding next year, more than three times the rate of inflation, at a time when most workers are struggling to get pay increases to match the rising cost of living.

Record profits from the Crown Estate — the state-controlled portfolio of land and investments worth more than £9bn, 15 per cent of the income from which is used to fund the Royal Household — mean the monarch’s income will increase from £36.1m (in 2013/14) to £37.9m (in 2014/15). Meanwhile, the Queen’s official expenditure increased to £35.7m last year — a rise of £1.9m. There was a 45 per cent increase in the amount spent on the upkeep of royal residences, including Buckingham Palace and Kensington Palace.

Prince Charles isn’t doing too shabbily either. The accounts reveal that his income from the Duchy of Cornwall, land and other assets held in trust for him increased by 2.4 per cent to £19.5m last year. He paid £4.2 m in tax — a reduction of about £250,000 from the previous year thanks to the new 45p tax rate. He likes to do things properly. He used the royal train on six of the nine occasions it ran last year. His bill came to £123,083. One trip, from Windsor to Worcester and then to Kensington, cost £19,578, almost 200 times the usual rail fare. The prince’s household staff has increased in size. He has 127, up from 105 six years ago, including three chauffeurs, several valets and dressers, and 21 gardeners.

He flew on a private plane chartered by Buckingham Palace to attend Nelson Mandela’s funeral in December at a cost of £250,000. The bill for his visit to India and Sri Lanka came to £433,020, while a visit to the Middle East, again on a charter plane, cost £245,000.

In total, £1.3m was spent on official travel for Prince Charles and his wife, the Duchess of Cornwall. The total amount drawn from the Sovereign Grant and government departments to fund official activities, including travel, was nearly £2.2m, almost double the previous year’s total.

At a time when living standards are stubbornly refusing to budge upwards despite the return of economic growth, the tricky business of how the Royal Family interacts with its 63 million subjects in Britain — you and me among them — and the two billion more across the 15 Commonwealth Realms and the overseas territories of which the Queen is monarch or head of state, including Australia, Canada and New Zealand, is getting trickier. The monarchy and money are an increasingly tricky mix.

Earlier this year, Kenan Malik, a British-based author, wrote an article in The New York Times that excoriated Britain for having a ‘welfare Queen’ as head of state who ‘publicly pleads poverty’, asking for more money to refurbish the many homes she lives in, despite having a vast personal fortune. The Sunday Times Rich List estimates she is worth at least £330m. Malik wrote: ‘In the past, reverence for the monarchy was rooted in a sense of deference and an acceptance of hierarchy. Today, deference has been replaced by cynicism — but as long as the public despises politicians and favours the Royals, one of the richest families in the world will continue to live luxuriously at the taxpayers’ expense.’

Republicans say the net increase in income and spending shows the Royal Family is badly out of step with public opinion at a time when government departments are slashing budgets by up to a third. Graham Smith, chief executive of Republic (a political organisation that advocates replacing the monarchy with an elected head of state), argues that the increase in the Queen’s income and expenditure ‘is frankly beyond belief when everybody is dealing with cuts. I think many people will struggle to comprehend how spending of this nature can be justified. It appears very much that the Royal Household believes it can get away with spending what it wants.’