Baroness Margaret Hodge has mentioned she is “very involved” that the Nationwide Audit Workplace didn’t set up Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s revenue from properties.
Baroness Hodge has mentioned the result of the NAO report is ‘stunning’ (Picture: Getty)
A Labour peer has prompt it’s inappropriate for taxpayers’ money for use to subsidise the hire of non-working royals. Responding to the Nationwide Audit Workplace’s investigation into royal properties, Baroness Margaret Hodge mentioned it was “worrying” that Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie weren’t contributing to their very own hire.
The previous chairwoman of the Public Accounts Committee mentioned: “The opposite factor that’s worrying is that individuals like Beatrice and Eugenie and the Kents – Prince Michael of Kent and his spouse – have been additionally being subsidised in the way in which that they have been dwelling on the property, they weren’t paying hire, and but they’re not working royals. Now, is it applicable for non-working royals to be subsidised by the taxpayer from a fund that belongs to the taxpayer?”
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Baroness Hodge added: “The Crown Estates is our cash, it’s taxpayers’ cash, it’s not theirs, and whoever runs that has to at all times make sure the taxpayers’ curiosity.”
Talking on BBC Radio 4’s At this time Programme, the Labour peer additionally voiced concern that the NAO didn’t set up Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s revenue from subletting royal properties.
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She mentioned she was “very involved” the Nationwide Audit Workplace was “not capable of finding how a lot cash was being secured by Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor from letting the properties” and about how its report didn’t cowl “the entire Crown Property properties”.
The Labour peer, chairwoman of the committee from 2010 to 2015, mentioned: “All of us desire a royal household to be continued to be revered, valued, and treasured. I desire a royal household, however in a contemporary period that does require correct transparency and accountability.
“It’s stunning that the Nationwide Audit Workplace was not in a position to set up how a lot cash Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor secured from the properties he let.”
Her feedback comply with the publication of the report by the Nationwide Audit Workplace into the Agency’s residential property preparations.
It discovered that Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie, the daughters of disgraced Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Sarah Ferguson, don’t pay hire on their houses on the royal palaces.
The King foots the invoice, regardless of the York sisters having major residences elsewhere and never being working members of the Royal Household, and their adjusted rents have been based mostly on outdated market valuations.
It additionally discovered that the previous Duke of York obtained undisclosed revenue from renting out three properties on his Royal Lodge property, regardless of paying solely a peppercorn hire for dwelling on the Windsor mansion for over 30 years.
Different key findings embrace that the monarch is paying the hire of the late Queen Elizabeth II’s cousin, Prince Michael of Kent, and his spouse, at Kensington Palace, regardless of Buckingham Palace asserting that from 2010, the couple would foot the then-£120,000 yearly hire themselves.
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