Ministers are set to draw up legislation to cut the Sovereign Grant, though there are no plans to rip up the arrangement established by Tory Chancellor George Osborne in 2011. The review comes at a difficult time for King Charles, who was jeered by anti-monarchy protesters during a recent visit to St Asaph Cathedral. Lord George Foulkes described a growing concern over royal spending amid public struggles, hoping for sweeping measures in the King's Speech next month.
Baroness Margaret Hodge, the Government's anti-corruption champion in 2024, has demanded more transparency on royal finances, with Keir Starmer's anti-corruption tsar also calling for greater openness. Baroness Margaret Hodge described the Sovereign Grant as having run out of time, noting that it increased while public services were cut during austerity, and she cited the Prince Andrew scandal as a tipping point. The Treasury has confirmed the amount the royals receive is being looked at as part of a five-year review process.
There's a growing concern that when a lot of people are finding the cost of living difficult, when there are a lot of people homeless, when there are a lot of people struggling, you see the royal estates and you see the Queen travelling by a helicopter to a race meeting (at the Plumpton Racecourse), it's getting increasingly unacceptable. And so it really needs to be a rather more radical review than it has been in the past.
The exact cuts proposed, the completion date of the five-year review, the structure of the legislation, the breakdown of the £138 million grant, and specific transparency measures remain unclear.
It's (the Sovereign Grant) run out of time. It's now the time for it to be reviewed, and I think she (Ms Reeves) is reviewing the terms of it. One would hope that they will come back with something that cuts that, so it reflects what's happening in the rest of Britain.
Right through the whole of austerity, when all public services were being cut, they were getting more and more Sovereign Grant.