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Royal family claim £100MILLION from taxpayers as nation battles Cost of Living crisis
A series of costs incurred by senior royals such as the Queen, Prince Charles and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have continued to rise in recent years despite ordinary Brits forced to cut their spending
The Royal Family cost taxpayers £102.4million last year, a report reveals today.
As the nation struggled in the cost of living crisis, spending on the royals rose £15million – 17% – to top £100m for the first time.
Royal finances expert Norman Baker said: “It’s not right.”
The multi-million-pound renovation of Buckingham Palace helped to drive up the bill for the royal family.
Spending on the project rose to £63.9million, up £14.4million on the previous year, as work intensified to prepare the palace for the Platinum Jubilee celebrations.
The Queen was in another of her official residences yesterday, receiving Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon at Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh.
The Sovereign Grant Report shows that last year, as in-person royal visits resumed following the pandemic, their travel costs rocketed from £1.3m to £4.5m.
Royal finances expert Norman Baker said: “The Government should have a complete rethink of how taxpayers’ money is allocated to the Royal Family.
“We have no say in how the royals choose to use private jets or helicopters, which are all paid for out of the public purse, and while ordinary people are struggling it isn’t right.” The 10-year Buckingham Palace renovation project appears to be on target to cost £369million.
Delivering the Sovereign Grant Report, Keeper of the Privy Purse, Sir Michael Stevens, said: “There was a significant increase in work against a hard deadline to enable Buckingham Palace to be at the centre of the Platinum Jubilee celebrations. We were pleased to deliver against our plans.”
Prince William and Kate Middleton during their royal tour in Jamaica ( Image: Ian Vogler / Daily Mirror)
The report shows spending on the royals rose by almost £15million in 2021/22, up more than 17% on the previous year.
Sir Michael said: “The year was not without operational and financial challenges. Covid meant we had another year in which access to the Royal Palaces was restricted for The Royal Collection Trust, which again affected our ability to help self-finance our work on behalf of the nation.”
Costs incurred by senior royals continued to rise as their subjects tightened their belts.
Prince William and Kate’s ill-fated trip to the Caribbean, where the future king admitted he had not been alive to anti-monarchy sentiment in Belize, Jamaica and The Bahamas, cost £226,000 in flights and accommodation.
Despite campaigning on environmental issues, Prince Charles still flies between his royal residences at an average cost of £15,000 a time.
The Queen’s royal train cost £100,000 for just three outings last year, but is now exclusively powered by “hydro treated vegetable oil”, royal sources revealed.
As a non-working royal, like Prince Harry and his wife Megan, Prince Andrew no longer qualifies for public funding and gets nothing from the Sovereign Grant. He is now thought to be exclusively funded privately by his mother, the Queen.
Caribbean tour
William and Kate’s controversial visit to Belize, Jamaica and the Bahamas cost roughly £226,000.
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge came in for heavy criticism during the tour in March, with critics labelling it a “throwback to Britain’s colonial past”.
The royal pair raised eyebrows for travelling in an open top Land Rover driven by a Jamaican soldier during a military parade, with some people suggesting it “looked like a scene from The Crown”.
In an unprecedented statement, William said after the Caribbean visit: “Tours are an opportunity to reflect. You learn so much.
“This tour has brought into even sharper focus questions about the past and the future. In Belize, Jamaica and the Bahamas, that future is for the people to decide upon.”
Royal train
The Queen will not give up using the royal train despite just three outings for her and Prince Charles costing £100,000
steps off the Royal train ( Image: @leeeeannex/TikTok)
The Queen will hold on to her favourite mode of transport, which she can travel and sleep on when on engagements – despite it being used so little each year.
Her Majesty used the royal train last July on a return journey from Windsor to Manchester to celebrate 60 years of Coronation Street and the 600th Anniversary of Manchester Cathedral, costing a staggering £42,452.
Prince Charles used the train twice, with a journey over several days between Stonehaven, Newcastle and Durham and back to Windsor coming in at a whopping £42,450.
A royal aide said: “The Queen has no plans to stop using the royal train which provides excellent value for money.”
Green fuel
Environmentalist Charles committed to using “green fuel” for plane journeys where he can, despite it costing the public purse far more than normal fuel A source close to the prince said the future king called him a “pioneer”and likened the situation to “buying a video recorder in the 1980s”.
The source added: “The prince is aware of the extra cost but the destructive cost to the environment during a climate emergency is far greater”.
Meghan & Harry
Harry and Meghan are now paying for themselves – the Prince of Wales no longer funds them after they ditched their royal roles seeking “financial independence”.
After they shed their life as working royals in 2020 they signed £100m worth of deals with streaming giants Netflix and Spotify.
During the couple’s interview with Oprah Winfrey in March last year, Harry said “my family literally cut me off financially” in “the first quarter of 2020”.
A source close to Prince Charles said the Duke and Duchess “should be congratulated on achieving their goal” in raking in millions from the private sector – despite using their new found roles to routinely slam the royal family on global television interviews.
Charles’s bill for his sons and their families no longer lists the Sussexes in the accounts.
Charity cash
Changes to the way the royal charities accept donations have been implemented after Prince Charles accepted £2.6million in cash from a former prime minister of Qatar.
The Prince of Wales will never again handle large sums in notes to be passed to his charities, a royal source has stated.
Charles faced criticism over being presented with one million euros stuffed in a briefcase while two other cash gifts of more than £1.6million were given in Fortnum & Mason carrier bags between 2011 and 2015.
A report claimed the heir to the throne personally accepted the donations for his charity The Prince of Wales’s Charitable Fund from Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim, above .
A royal source said Charles acts on advice and such incidents have not happened in the past five years and will not happen again.
Bullying probe
Buckingham Palace has been accused of a whitewash after refusing to reveal the findings of an independent law firm instructed to investigate allegations that Meghan Markle bullied junior staff during her time as a royal.
The probe was launched in March last year after the Duchess of Sussex was accused of bullying at least two palace aides – occasionally reducing staffers to tears and “humiliating” another.
At the time, Buckingham Palace said it would “not tolerate bullying and harassment” and was “very concerned by the allegations” that the Duchess – who has denied the claims – forced out two personal assistants and undermined the confidence of a third.
A senior palace source cited the confidentiality of those who took part in the review as to why details were not released.
Source: www.mirror.co.uk
A 24-year-old tricycle (Pragyia) rider, has been jailed three months by the Nkawie Circuit Court in the Atwima Nwabiagya South Municipality of the Ashanti Region for biting a Community Police Assistant (CPA) at Nkawie.
Abdul Aziz pleaded guilty to the charge of negligently causing harm and was convicted on his own plea.
Police Inspector Kwaku Frimpong, prosecuting told the court presided by Mr Robert Addo that, complainants in the case were officers from the Nkawie Divisional Motor Traffic and Transport Department (MTTD) of the Ghana Police Service.
He said on September 3, at about 8:40am, the complainants led by Chief Inspector Abedi Larbi, were on their official patrol duty to ensure safety at Nkawie township and met the convict, who was in-charge of a Pragya tricycle with registration number M-25-A-3722.
He explained that, after a careful inspection, it was detected that the convict was without licence and other required documents, so Alhassan Seidu, the CPA, was instructed to lead him to the office for the next action.
On their way to the office, the convict took a different direction, so the CPA directed him to take the right route to the police station, but he disobeyed and attacked the CPA, resulting in a struggle between them.
In the process the convict bit the CPA on the chest, so he shouted for help and some nearby youth rushed to the scene and helped him to arrest the convict.
In his caution statement, he admitted the offence and after further investigations he was charged and brought before the court. –GNA
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The New Patriotic Party (NPP) has urged the government to place all 54,985 candidates affected by the 2026 Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) placement exercise in schools and publish the final outcome.
The party says the government must ensure that the affected candidates secure actual school places rather than merely being allowed to access the self-placement portal.
In a statement signed by the Chairman of the NPP Policy Co-ordination Committee, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, the party expressed concern about the situation facing the candidates.
The NPP said the government had announced that 53,887 of the affected candidates could use the self-placement system after initially being told that they had not qualified for secondary school.
It, however, argued that access to the portal did not guarantee that candidates would secure their preferred schools or programmes.
“Ghanaian parents and candidates will judge the resolution of the challenge by one thing only: how many of the original 54,985 are sitting in a classroom, not how many were allowed to open a website,” the statement noted.
The party said the government’s own figures showed that the country had 859,828 declared vacancies for 623,072 BECE candidates.
It explained that the main challenge was the concentration of demand in a small number of highly subscribed schools.
The NPP noted that 313,283 candidates selected Category A schools as their first choice, while those schools had 76,417 declared vacancies.
It therefore called on the government to explore ways to improve schools with available spaces, including providing teachers, laboratories and better programmes.
The party urged the government to use the 85 private schools participating in the Free SHS programme to absorb candidates who remained without placements.
The NPP further called for clarification of the rule and pass mark used for this year’s placement exercise, saying parents were entitled to know the standard before their children sat the examination.
It urged the government to take urgent action to ensure that the affected candidates were not left behind in the transition to secondary education.
By: Jacob Aggrey
