The shocking truth about the royal finances

0:02The Telegraph.

0:09The Royal Family. Is it valued for money or are they ripping us off? A parliamentary committee has decided to launch an investigation into royal property and land after the Prince Andrew saga at Royal Lodge. Plus, David Dimbleby's been having a pop. Also, former MP Norman Baker has been investigating their finances and some of his revelations will blow your mind. Welcome to The Daily Tea with me, Camilla Tomini. And me, Tim Stanley.

0:48Today is all about the royal finances. Yesterday, a very important parliamentary committee, the Public Accounts Committee, said two things. One, it wants an inquiry into the Crown estate. Camilla, what is that? So the Crown Estate is a£15 billion property portfolio, including huge swathes of St James's in London and other parts of the UK from which money is derived to fund the royal family. Back in the old days, up until 2011, they used to receive their funding for their public work via something called the civil list, which was a chunk of money that was hived off to make sure the king, queen, prince and princess of Wales and others could carry out their public duties.

1:34So it paid for their offices and all the rest of it. That was changed to something called the sovereign grant, which is derived from a chunk of the profits of the crown estate. Crucially, the Crown Estate doesn't just include buildings, it also includes the seabed around the UK. That's been particularly lucrative in recent years because of the advent of offshore wind farms. So is the Crown Estate things that the royal family technically own? The Crown Estate is responsible for some properties that are held in trust almost on behalf of the state that the royals occupy, but one shouldn't confuse, for instance, Buckingham Palace, which is a national monument, with Balmoral Castle, which is a privately owned property by the royal family.

2:18It used to be owned by the late Queen. She purchased it privately. Now it's been inherited by King Charles. OK. Well, the Public Accounts Committee wants to hold an inquiry into all of this. That's the first critical thing it's said. The second is that Andrew, the royal formerly known as Prince, will most likely not receive compensation for being booted out of Royal Lodge at Windsor. Yes. He was on a 75-year lease. He's going to leave early. We thought he might be technically able to claim a£488 ,000 package of compensation. Yes, because he's leaving before the lease is up. Because he's leaving before the lease is up, but it looks like he won't get that.

2:56Why? Because I think the decision has been made that it would be odd for him to be paid compensation when it's actually a familial decision to get him out of Windsor Great Park for reputational reasons. And therefore, I think the Crown Estate and the Royals accept that it would look ludicrous for him to be compensated. He got that peppercorn rent and a 75-year lease on the back of a promise to upkeep Royal Lodge. And to a certain extent, he did that because he initially carried out millions of pounds worth of renovations. However, Royal Lodge is not in a good state right now. It needs a lot of work doing on it.

3:35In fact, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor might be pleased he's moving to Sandringham at some point in the next 12 months. By the way, that immediate move out is not happening. It's been delayed until next year. Why? Why the extra 12 months? I think he needs a bit more time to get his ducks in a row. We've also had a little bit of a crossover because William and Kate and their three children, George, Charlotte and Louis have moved into a different property on the Windsor Great Park estate. They've moved from Adelaide Cottage to Forest Lodge nearby, so they're still neighbours with their errant uncle Andy.

4:11So I think a lot's gone on. Staff need time to help with the move. They've reached some kind of compromise. So although he's been stripped of all of these remaining titles and all the rest of it and, as you say, been reduced to having a double-barrel surname and no trappings of royal life, They're giving him a bit more time. I just think they think it would look ludicrous for him to be given, what is it, a£488 ,000 payout? And he's left it in a bad state. But to me what's interesting is that we're moving on from the idea that there is one rotten apple in the barrel to questions about the barrel and how the barrel's finances have managed to stretch this metaphor.

4:50Just as we keep asking, where does Andrew's money come from? How can he afford this? Why is he in this house? Why doesn't he leave it straight away? people are starting to ask similar questions about other royals. And at the heart of this is the sheer amount of money they have, given how smaller the royal family has become. Yes, because... I think that's one reason why we're discussing this. Well, if you lose a Duke of York and, by association, a Duchess, they divorce, but they're still living as husband and wife, although she's had to move into another property altogether. We think she's gone to Portugal to live with Princess Eugenie, who is based out there.

5:23And you've lost the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. We're going to come on to Megan's documentary in just a moment. Yes. And it's slimmed down naturally through death as well. Then why do you need to have such a large property portfolio? There's a question about the transparency of finances, but we'll get on to. It's been highlighted in a documentary by, of all people, David Dimbleby. But when it comes to the properties, this is difficult, isn't it? Particularly for the Prince of Wales, who is a patron of Centrepoint, the homelessness charity. Right. We've got Buckingham Palace, Clarence House, St James's Palace, Kensington Palace.

6:02We've then got Sandringham, the King's own private house at Highgrove. Queen Camilla has got a private house at Raymill in Wiltshire. Yeah. Balmoral Castle. And if you really wanted to help the homeless, you could give one of those to Sarah Ferguson. Well, he could do, but then it would probably spark an outrage. But there's an argument, isn't there, in general, that they've basically got too many properties. Buckingham Palace has got the big question mark over it. No one wants to live there. And that's problematic because they've just spent millions renovating it. All of the electrics and the heating system and everything was archaic.

6:39We had a situation where Princess Anne was nearly hit by falling masonry in the quadrangle. The place is dilapidated. They successfully argued for it to be repaired. but the king isn't living there. He's using the renovations as an excuse but he just prefers to live in Clarence House. William and Kate are clearly reluctant to move into Windsor Castle because they've just gone into this other Forest Lodge property. So I think Buckingham Palace is being repositioned as the people's palace, open it to the public, hold events, have the caravan club there in the summer, host garden parties but it's going to beg the question as we are all facing a cost of living crisis, higher rents and higher mortgages, hang on a minute.

7:17You don't need all these homes. And there's this paradox that the royal family has never been more powerless historically, constitutionally. I mean, we're not in the 16th century anymore. It doesn't cut people's heads off. And yet it's not just financially solvent, it's rolling in it. And it's doing very well. And it puts on a great deal of pomp and circumstance as we saw at the coronation. Other royal families have gone the other way. They have slimmed down, become more bureaucratic and modest in order to justify what they do. and they are sometimes, I think, seen fulfilling a constitutional role more than our royal family.

7:51I would say the British royal family is, from a status point of view and indeed a fame point of view, a cut above the rest and therefore it behaves differently. The David Dimbleby documentary is interesting, Tim, not just because of his father's connections to royalty but because he was the front man for all BBC major royal events. Yes. Your births, deaths, marriages and coronations. Dimbleby's at the forefront. I'm not sure if a three-part documentary questioning royal finances would have been broadcast while Queen Elizabeth II was still alive. No. Chris Bennion has reviewed it for The Telegraph, our colleague, and he makes the point that one particular episode entitled Money questions the lack of transparency over royal finances.

8:34As he points out, Chris, they're exempt from most taxes, few of them pay rent. The increasingly commercial duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster, These are the two duchies that fund both the king, in the case of Lancaster, and the Prince of Wales in the case of Cornwall. They're land holdings from which they derive income. They bring them an enormous private income, much of it from the taxpayer. Prince William refuses to publish his tax returns. He and his father are billionaires. Few will be aware that the family is exempt from health and safety, equal opportunity and wildlife protection laws. They're even exempt from the Race Relations Act.

9:08So we've got enormous wealth, but we've got an opaqueness and we know their wills are sealed. They can't be subject to freedom of information requests and they don't pay inheritance tax. And we're going to get onto all that in just a moment with Norman Baker, who has written a book about royal finances and how shady and shadowy they seem. You're desperate to talk about Meghan's new documentary. Yes, I can't think of anything else. I've been awake all night. Like I was waiting for Santa to come down the chimney, but it's Meghan with her wreath of vegetables. And her crudité dip in a Christmas format.

9:47At one point, she's in red pyjamas. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, let's set the scene with the opening paragraph of Anita Singh's excellent review, in which she says, It's the most wonderful time of the year. The Christmas songs are playing, the festive drinks are flowing, and over in California, the Duchess of Sussex is making a vegetable crudité wreath out of raw broccoli and desperation. It's a good line. Prince Harry, normally a cameo in anything that Meghan does. He's got a full ten minutes. He has. In which he puts his foot in it several times, criticises her cooking. Yes. And you can see that she's looking at the knife and contemplating what other crudités she could perform later on.

10:29Yeah, he doesn't like her beetroot salad and he thinks her mother Doria makes a better gumbo, a shrimp soup, as they say. To explain, it's a day in the life of Megan as she prepares for Christmas with her friends. And, of course, by friends, we mean people she met 30 minutes before. Indeed. One of them, her final guest, a tennis player, looks terrified. Naomi Osaka. Right. They're such good friends that Megan has to check with Naomi the pronunciation of Naomi's daughter's name. Yes, and that comes up, by the way, because Megan's idea of a good time is to decorate some plates. Yes. So her guest, understandably, writes her daughter's name on it and Megan has to ask, how is that pronounced?

11:10My other problem with it, and you pointed this out to me, and I was having some problems watching it. I was slightly retching, I've got to be honest, as a working mother. She has hand-stitched Advent calendars with little pouches with Archie's name and Lily's name, her two children. Because, she says, every tradition has a beginning. Profound. So you'll keep those for life. Indeed. In fact, I might write that down as a motivational message to myself because as well as little presents in each day, she also writes a motivational message to her own children, including, what was it, be brave. She approaches children as though they're going through a midlife crisis, by the way.

11:47I think she projects whatever happens privately with Harry onto her own children. Does a child need to be told, you are the centre of my world? Hopefully not. That's the last thing you should be telling them. Also, what's happened to Harry's hair? Oh, yes. No, it's gone for a burden. Yeah. That's not coming back. But, you know, he's in LA. He should have the courage to wear a rug. You know, really go for it. What toupee are? And just not explain it. Royalty meets Michael Fabricant. Just appear in one of these videos with a dead cat on his head. Can I just... You know I've had quite a tense morning.

12:18Working motherhood has really hit me like a bus today in the middle of my working day. So I do somewhat resent Megan channeling what she believes is the epitome of working motherhood, which to me is just a demonstration of everything that I cannot achieve. I can't achieve the crisp white shirt and I can't achieve the perfectly clean kitchen. And I frankly haven't got time to sew advent calendars together because this is what working motherhood is like in real life. Megan. Working motherhood is me earlier as you were phoning going, what's going to what we're going to say on this podcast today? I was running around the Sainsbury's local because I haven't got my husband a birthday present for tomorrow, buying Toblerone and boxes of Maltesers, scraping together some cards, at which point my eldest child contacted me and said, I need antibiotics immediately.

13:14How can I get them? Mum, please reply, reply, reply, which any parent can identify with the urgency with which children contact you. You can phone them and it just rings through. They don't answer. But if they contact you, even if you're in between recording two podcasts, you must react. I'm then trying to navigate a GP system that doesn't work, a pharmacy first system that won't help me because of symptoms that they need me to confirm that I can't because my daughter's miles away. And added into the mix, she's playing Hamlet in Hamlet tonight, is coughing, has a sore throat and can barely speak.

13:49Oh, my goodness. Now, that's working motherhood, Tim. I know, I know, I know. Well, look, I'm a working dad because I've got a dog. Never repeat that statement. Whenever I want to be good to myself, as Megan tells us, we must be with the smile of a Scientologist who's just spotted another mark. I don't make a vegetable crudité platter. No. I pop a Valium. Yes. But she never does that on a show. But here are, Megan embodies Marx's various contradictions of capitalism. She keeps preaching authenticity, but she's not, I believe she's not even in her own house. No, it's not her house. She cares about the poor, but everything there looks super expensive.

14:29There's a bit where she visits like a designer Christmas tree park. And of course, she greets the lady who runs it with a hug. Imagine if I was to do that, if I was to go up to Stoney Picks Farm in Sevenoaks and give a massage to the man who runs it and say, got any good trees, mate? Shoulder rub. But most of all, she is Little Miss Progressive. Gosh, I sound like a coward, don't I? She's Little Miss Progressive, but she's something out of the 1950s. Yeah, but she doesn't make the food and she hasn't made the advent calendar. She's telling us women that they should live in the style of a woman out of the 1950s, preparing little gifts and messages for your children saying how wonderful they are.

15:07I thought we had moved on from this. Yeah, my kid's got a Kinder Bueno advent calendar. They're really happy with that. Can you cheer me up because I've had a stressful day? You said to me downstairs and I completely lost it. You did a very good impression of the friend who famously interviewed Megan for that podcast. What is her name? I don't even know her name. I think she's called Jamie Kern-Lima. And a lot of this conversation has gone viral for all the wrong reasons. You did an impression. Hello, Megan. Thank you for being on my show. And of course, Megan then stares at her with that Scientologist gaze and says something like, how are you?

15:55And Jamie goes, you always make it about other people. You can't stop it. Honestly. Also, the top news line. How's this woman? Never been asked in her life, how are you? That's something I don't believe. I actually think a number of people have asked, how are you doing? The main news takeaway from all this is that Megan, shock horror, gets up in the morning, gives her children breakfast and takes them to school like it's some extraordinary feat of motherhood. Yes. That is just an average maternal morning. Yes. I know. I know. I know. But having said all of this, Having just poured so much bile over her crudité platter, at least Meghan pays for herself.

16:42She ain't costing me a penny. Well, on that note, let's bring Norman Baker into the conversation, once a Liberal Democrat MP, now applying some much-needed scrutiny to the royal finances.

17:10Norman Baker joins us in the Daily Tea studio to discuss his new book, Royal Mint National Debt, The Shocking Truth About the Royal's Finances. Former Lib Dem MP, you've looked at this many times before, Norman. You are very often banging on about the royal family being too expensive when they themselves say to him, I don't know if you know what the cost of the royal family is, according to the royal family. Do you know? No. It's the cost of a cup of coffee per year. Norman, are you disagreeing with... Per person. Per person, per year. Otherwise it's a very good cup of coffee. Otherwise it's costing the general public three pounds alone to fund the royal family, which would be extraordinary.

17:50Cost of a cup of coffee, Norman? Well, if it were a cost of a cup of coffee, I wouldn't be sitting here and I wouldn't have written the book, but the reality is it's far more than that because that's very selective and also it's out of date because there was, for example, a 53 % increase in the sovereign grant this year. And you've got to bear in mind that in 2011, the last year of the civil list, the cost of supporting the royals from the public purse directly, I'll come on to the indirect cost in the moment, directly was£7.9 million. The cost of the sovereign grant that replaced it this year is£132.1 million.

18:27That's an obscene increase over the 14-year period. But it's more than that. It's not simply the sovereign grant. There's the exemption from taxation, which the royals uniquely benefit from. For example, Charles inherited privately from his mother, not talking about Buckingham Palace and so on, privately, a string of racehorses, jewellery worth over half a billion pounds, £100 million stamp collection, Fabergies, Monnier paintings. Anybody else in the country with those passing them on to their heir would pay inheritance tax. Charles did not pay inheritance tax and won't pay inheritance tax. Then there are duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster, which many people, including me, believe should have been wrapped up in the transfer of royal lands to the public in 1760 as part of the 1760 settlement.

19:15but they've been held onto by the royals. That gives Charles and William, respectively, from the Duchy of Lancaster and Duchy of Cornwall an income stream for them personally for about£25 million a year, 100 times more than the Prime Minister gets in the public purse. That's a huge benefit. And at the same time, Charles has always said that these are private estates. I don't agree with that, but if they are private estates, how come they're regulated by the Treasury, no other private estate is, and how come there's no corporation tax or capital gains tax or anything else paid on these estates?

19:50Then there's all the gifts which have been given to the royal family over the years, which had they been given to MPs or councillors or anyone else, would it have been declared publicly? Hang on, official gifts are declared. No, official gifts are, but there's a whole lot of gifts which are given to the royal family, which many of us think are official gifts, given on state visits abroad, which are then kept as, quote, personal gifts by the royal family. Now, Norman, the sovereign grant was meant to be fairer because it derived its income, which it uses to fund the royal family, from the profits of the Crown Estate.

20:20The Crown Estate, you'll be familiar with, huge swathes of London, Regent Street and other very nice and swanky parts of the UK are owned by the Crown Estates, and then they slice off a share of the profits. Now, the profits have gone up because it also includes most of the sort of seabed around the UK, doesn't it, Norman? It does. The Crown Estate does. And actually, because they've put wind farms on such land, the profits have increased. So actually, the royals can thank Ed Miliband for being in Clover in recent times. Well, if I may say so, it's not quite as simple as that. The Crown Estate has been...

20:56The Crown lands which formed the Crown Estate were surrendered to the public in 1760. And there was no connection between the royals and the Crown Estate other than technical nominal one for 211 years until 2011 when George Osborne changed the system. But even now, it's not a case of the crown estate profit being sliced off as the word you used to the royal family. What happens instead is that the crown estate money still goes to the government as a public income stream, but then there's a calculation made to fund the royals for an equivalent of a certain percentage of the crown estate money. So it's an indirect assessment.

21:33And Andrew Turnbull, the former cabinet secretary, has said that this is ludicrous. you may as well link it to the profits of Tesco. There's no other logical way of doing it. But was he a lefty? Is the point that their money has gone up from that income stream because the Crown lands are generating more profit? Yes, exactly. And before 2011, all the money from the wind farms would have gone to the Treasury to fund all the public services. Now a percentage, 12.5, I think he did at the moment, is going to the Royal Family. For what? Why do they get money from that? Well, the counter-argument, I suppose, would be how else are you going to fund them?

22:08and you can answer that question, Norman. There is an anomaly here because actually the size of the royal family has got smaller. They've lost Prince Harry and Meghan. They've lost now the grand old Duke of York. Who they refuse to pay for. Well, indeed. They've not just lost them, they've cut them off. They've cut them off. You've got fewer working royals now than you had, say, back in the 80s and 90s when you had that balcony. That balcony image was full of royals and you were like, oh, God, who's that? Oh, that's somebody's second cousin twice removed. It's a smaller institution, and yet it is existing on ever greater sums.

22:41That's precisely the point, Camilla. It has got smaller, and Charles said he wanted a slimmed-down monarchy. Well, that's fine. There are fewer people for the reasons you've given. But I want a slimmed-down cost, not a slimmed-down monarchy, and the cost has gone up. And you have to ask yourself, it's not just the reduction in numbers, but also Charles introduced efficiencies to the way the royal family operates and the estates and so on. But the benefits go into him and to William. It's not going to the public purse. And the royal family is costing us a fair estimate. If you count in the Dutchies and the tax exemptions and so on, I would say that the royal family is costing over£500 million a year.

23:18That's over 10 times the nearest equivalent in Europe, which is a Dutch monarchy, which comes to about£46 million. But the Dutch, I mean, they're out and about on bicycles. It's a completely different system. You've got European monarchies that are really low profile, don't have the same soft power punch or internationally diplomatic role as, say, the current wars have. And you can try and debate against that, Norman. But we saw the power of the royal red carpet very recently when Trump came to town. Regardless of whether you like or loathe the US president, it wouldn't have been a bigger deal if he had gone and seen the Dutch royals.

23:55Nobody can name them. Nobody can pick them out of a line out. But you're not telling me all this money is going on carriages, right? My question is, some of the money, is it going on good things? Like I know the royal family do support estates where they support traditional handicrafts, where they support good new practices and farming and things like that. There is a great deal of waste and an accumulation of money by the royals, which is difficult to justify. That's not to say that they don't do some good things. I'm happy to accept they do some good things and if people want to visit Buckingham Palace and so on they can visit Buckingham Palace But incidentally by the way Buckingham Palace which is costing us 365 million pounds to upgrade before 1952 that was paid for by the king It's only it's only since then it's become a public cost and the royal family themselves at least have the palace officials In 2008 said the cost would be 50 million is now become 365 million pounds an enormous increase And here's the rub.

24:54We're paying for the refurbishment, but the money coming in for the ticket sales is private income going to the king. Oh, really? Yes. But we don't want Buckingham Palace not to be upkept and repaired. No, we don't, no. We don't want it falling into ruin. I mean, what's the alternative? I mean, I said that earlier, Norman, how else should they be funded? What's a different model? How would you fund them? Well, I'd fund them through, it's in my recommendations in the book, effectively returned to civil list where you identify what's needed for a slimmed-down monarchy if you want a monarchy. And the book doesn't argue for a republic.

25:29It argues for a properly costed monarchy, actually. If you want a properly costed monarchy, a return to the sort of civil list arrangements with parliamentary scrutiny, which has been eroded and taken away with the sovereign grant. And we used to have regular debates in Parliament. We don't have that anymore. And we fixed the amount of money based on what we want from the royal family and supporting, I would suggest, the king and queen, William and Kate and that's it. We don't need to support other people. Well, hang on, the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh, Edward and Sophie they go around doing very good work.

25:59They've been abroad a lot And they live in a palace 120 room mansion which they rattle around in for which they pay a peppercorn rent Yes, I've been there. Bagshot Park It's very nice. I've sat in the orangery there I don't mind telling you Tim for a magazine article where to be fair a corduroy wearing Edward did make us all a cup of tea. They're nice people. They may well be nice people, but they're on a peppercorn round of 120-room mansion. But the other problem is, Norman, they can't have jobs because they're working royals. So how are they meant to sustain themselves? Edward was told in no uncertain terms back in the day that he, well, to be fair, he got caught filming footage of Prince William going to university when there was a media ban on any reportage at all of the princes at school or at uni.

26:47and he had to give all that up and he was told, look, dedicate your life to public duty. If you're going to dedicate your life to public duty and you can't make a living, you've got to be subsisted by your family. We were literally discussing welfare the other day and how those people ought to get off their bottoms and get a job. But a man in a 120-room palace, he's got no other choice. Well, you can't help the family you're born into. I mean, I get your point entirely on the lack of transparency, for instance, on wills. I get your point on inheritance tax. Is this true you can't do a freedom of information request?

27:24Well, you can do one, but you won't get any answer from it. Right. I mean, what happened was that I was told in 2000 by the Labour Minister at the time, because I asked the parliamentary question, will the royal family be treated as part of the public sector and be subject to the same rules and exclusions, of course, for privacy reasons, as anything else in the public sector would be, as MPs would be, as councillors would be. And I was assured that they would be. Now, that's been eroded. While the Freedom of Information Act has expanded over the time, for example, to include Network Rail, who weren't included originally, it's gone backwards only with the royals.

27:56And the reason it went backwards is because they don't like the scrutiny. And particularly when Charles was exposed, if you remember his so-called spire letters, when he was writing to government ministers on highly political matters in a way that most people thought was inappropriate for the heir to the throne to be involved in politics, you know, lobbying for hunting or homeopathy or whatever he was doing. Very important positions, but not really ones which the royals should be engaging in, I would suggest. When that all became public, Charles' reaction was not to say, I'm sorry I went too far by being political.

28:29His reaction was to say to the government, can we change the rules so I'm not found out in the future? And that's what happened. And now there's a total exemption, even for public interest, on Charles and William and basically it's almost impossible to get anything else out on any of the odds. And the recent revelations on the royals, for example, the excellent Channel 4 documentary on the Duchy of Cornwall, Duchy of Lancaster, which exposed they were charging the army, charging the army, a fortune to yomp across Dartmoor, charging the Royal Navy to park ships, charging NHS a million pounds a year for a warehouse in London.

29:04Those matters came out through examination of property records, but not from free information, which has basically been closed down. And the Royal Archives, of course, have been to the Royal Archives. There's a tiny room, no bigger than the room we're sitting in now, which is a very small room, I might say, for those who are listening to this. You can get four people in there only at a time to research the Royal Archives. There's no index. It's like throwing a dartboard with your blindfold on. You ask for something and hope it's there. But nothing beyond 1952 is available. 74, 73 years of material has been closed and it's not there.

29:42You can't access it. Whereas the National Archives is much more open, of course, and we've been moving towards a situation where the public records are available after 20 years rather than 30 years. We're moving in the right direction of the National Archives or the opposite direction of the Royal Archives. Having said that, if you are in a family where, you know, just because of who you are and how you were born and your parentage, that you end up inheriting Henry VIII's jousting stick and Queen Victoria's Fabergé egg. I mean, they're heirlooms that are passed down. I suppose you could argue, well, if you made them pay inheritance tax on stuff that is literally priceless, then it's going to be economically problematic for them.

30:22They're going to have to flog a few properties, and that might include Buckingham Palace. And then who's going to buy it? Maybe a Russian oligarch, maybe a Chinese investor. No, there's two sorts of properties. There's properties which are held in right of the crown, as the phrase goes, which are inviolate and which they wouldn't be taxed on and shouldn't be taxed on. For example, Buckingham Palace you mentioned, obviously that's a state asset, so that should be exempt. But there are so-called private estates, Sandringham and Balmoral and so on, which are theirs. And there's a chapter in my book called Houses of Windsor, which goes through all the properties you've got, which is extraordinary.

30:55They have got a lot of property, Tim. Is that problematic? Can I ask, well, as regards to the scandal of the Duchess of Lancaster and Cornwall, who, as you say, were charging high rates to the army, the NHS, etc., how are they managed? I mean, is this a situation where it's like a blind trust that just operates a market rate? No, I'm afraid not. I mean, you might argue that's appropriate. The Queen, when she was done like Queen Elizabeth, was reasonably hands-off on the Duchess of Lancaster. Charles was very much hands-on on the Duchess of Cornwall, and William has become even more hands-on. If you look at who he's appointed to the board that manages the Duchy of Cornwall, who are these people he's appointed to the board?

31:33They are property developers. They are investment bankers. That's a priority he's setting. And he's very actively involved in the management of that, including phone calls at weekends and so on to members of staff, in a way that is very, very personal and I think inappropriate. You shouldn't be doing that. And actually, if you look at the number of engagements he's carried out, and this is a criticism I've got of him. I think he carried out last year 166 engagements. Now, you may say, well, of course, Kate was not very well with cancer and so on, and I totally understand that. But, you know, Charles, who's also suffering from cancer and is much older than William by definition, was carried out twice as many engagements.

32:13And Princess Anne, for example, was very active, as she always is, with engagements. So William is not doing his job, in my view, in terms of going out there and representing the royals, but he's certainly doing his own job in making sure he micromanages the Duchy of Cornwallton backslides his income. Well, he might also argue that along with his wife, he's got young school-aged children who he's trying to prioritise. He's trying to prioritise immediate family over family firm. Why? Because unfortunately the royal family has a history of not being very good parents to their children who had often in the past been brought up on the nursery floor.

32:45And in many instances we know how that's ended up. I mean, we'll get on to Prince Andrew in a minute. Yes. I come back to the point about the crown lands money because this, it strikes me, this isn't like Louis XV spending the entire state budget on a pair of socks. This isn't feudalism. This is actually a very efficiently capitalist monarchy that's actually making money a bit too well. It seems to be what you're arguing. One sort of assumes because they are public servants that even if they do make a lot of money, they ought to instinctively put it back or take less of it. But actually, the picture you're painting is of a royal family that are, in financial terms, doing well.

33:28This is not a royal family that's leeching off the state. It's a royal family which is just reaping the rewards of a well-run property portfolio. Well, I mean, I think I wouldn't use the word leeching because it's pejorative. But, I mean, they are making money from the state. in a way that's inappropriate. They're doing so by tax exemptions, which nobody else benefits from. They're doing so from the Duchy of Cornwall and Duchy of Lancaster, which in my view should be wrapped up into the Crown Estate and still should be wrapped up into the Crown Estate. But if it stays private, then they should be paying taxes as any other private estate does, and they don't.

34:04So they are avoiding taxation, which everybody else has to pay. And I think that's wrong. But back to the peppercorn rent issue. if, as you say, the royal property portfolio is split between those properties that are kind of held on behalf of the state and private properties. If, for instance, the king now, having inherited them from the late Queen Elizabeth II, owns both Bagshot House, which is Sophie and Edward. Well, he doesn't. The Crown Estate owns that. OK. Well, if the Crown Estate owns it, then it's up to the Crown Estate to decide what rent and what terms Edward and Sophie lease that house.

34:40for the same reason that it was down to the lease arrangement between the king or the crown estate, as you say, and Prince Andrew when it came to Royal Lodge. The lease agreement that was agreed all those years ago was you won't pay any rent, but you will have to upkeep this property, and that does tend to cost millions when homes are of 100 rooms or more, right? Is that not a fair deal then? When it comes to Prince Edward's house, There were alternative uses available to the Crown Estate at the time, including there was a serious bid for a conference centre and I think one for a hotel, which would have brought in more money for the Crown Estate.

35:20There is pressure on the Crown Estate from the Royal Family, particularly for properties in Windsor Grey Park, to say we can't have anybody else coming in here because it's a security matter for us and therefore we have to have a royal in those buildings. And that's sometimes quite a powerful argument and with some justification. but it obviously weakens the negotiating position of the Crown Estate if you've only got one person or one body, the royal family, that can go into that particular building. So the deal that Edward got was actually quite a generous one. First of all there was about five million spent on refurbishment right away of which three and a half million came from the Crown Estate itself and only I think one and a half million from Edward.

35:58He then had a deal whereby he paid I I think, five million up front, and then got a peppercorn rent for life. So obviously, the longer he stays there, the less per year, effectively, he's paying for that property, which comes down to about£50 ,000 a year, which is nothing for a building of that size. And when it comes to Prince Andrew, I mean, Prince Andrew would still be in Royal Lodge under the terms of the lease, were it not for his spectacular fall from grace? Yes, he would. And would that be fair or not? Well, it's fair in the sense that there was a deal reached. I mean, I think it was a deal where there was a kind of revolver to the head of the Crown Estate, but there was a deal reached which was signed in a legal agreement, which means he didn't need to leave or doesn't need to leave legally.

36:46Yeah, I mean, he's been made to leave by his brother. Exactly. He did personally pay for upgrades to the property. Yes, he did, yeah. And that's money he doesn't get back. No, that's right. He can't afford it, actually, as well, because he's paying, the estimate is£4 million a year to stay there, 1 million on maintaining the building and 3 million apparently on security because it's a very difficult building to be. If you're employing people 24 hours a day to be around your building, that's a very expensive cost. But sometimes the counter arguments to arguments that suggest that the royals should live their lives in a different way, for instance, even if you argue for republicanism in, say, Australia, the reason that referendum failed is because people couldn't think of an alternative that they would prefer.

37:29And so just mindful of Sue Townsend's The Queen and I, you know, the Adrian Mole author who went on to write a book about the late Queen Elizabeth II ending up in a council estate. Where else would we house these people? If not at Windsor Great Park or the Sandringham Estate, where do you think somebody like Andrew should be living? Somewhere in a cul-de-sac in Croydon? Well, I mean, Charles has offered them somewhere in the Sandringham Estate by all accounts. That's the rumour. But is that OK, Norman, I suppose, is the question I'm asking. He's not paying any more rent than he is now, is he? Well, if it's a property which is genuinely owned privately by Charles or someone else, then that's a private matter and it's not for us to intervene in that.

38:09It becomes a public matter when he's in a building which he's not paying appropriate rent for because of the deal that's been set with the Crown Estate. And I think people want to see Andrew in particular cut down to size, to be honest with you. There's a kind of will in the public to see a different arrangement with Andrew. Well, then you'd want to be putting him in a one-bedroom flat somewhere. Well, I wouldn't want to do that. On the A10. I would make the point that the one-bedroom flat in Romford, which, if you want to compare it with that, is probably more expensive for someone than it would be for Fred Wood now living in where he's living.

38:42I don't think we want to put Prince Andrew anywhere with the word romp in it.

38:48I mean, in general, Norman, what's your biggest... Well, you've done this book. It's a comprehensive and forensic analysis analysis of exactly how the royal family is funded. Of all of your concerns about the way that they are financed, what's the biggest? Well, the biggest problem, I think, is a sovereign grant, which provides far too much money for the royals, more than they need by a long way, and based on a flawed prospectus that somehow the operation of a private property company should influence the amount the royals get. And it's becoming more flawed because of the way, since 2011, we've seen a massive increase in crown estate profits due to offshore wind farms and the like.

39:33And it's now out of kilter. And the lack of parliamentary scrutiny concerns me. So that is a nub of it. But I think what concerns me genuinely, I don't want to be unnecessarily unpleasant about the royal family, but if you read through the details of my book, and I've obviously researched this a great deal, as you say, Camilla, there is an unerring wish to maximise money coming in, which looks a bit scuzzy, to be honest with you. You know, it's not simply about money coming in. It's about how can we maximise money coming in. And I don't like that. Once you've got beyond a certain amount of money, you don't need any more.

40:08You really don't. But this is idealism over realism. As Tim's pointed out, these people aren't socialists. No, they're not. They don't have to be socialists, but there's plenty of people who... They're worse. the green liberals. Well, there is now an explanation, isn't there, for the eco-warriering... I now understand why William is so keen on these wind farms. Yes. The scales have fallen from your eyes. So, yeah, we had Prince Philip was an eco-warrior. So was his son. So was his grandson. Because actually wind farms are a good thing for the coffers. Do you know what, Norman? I remember being in that meeting with the keeper of the privy purse, which is a posh name to describe a royal accountant, when it was announced that the civil list was changing to the sovereign grant, and it was explained to us in the simplest terms possible.

40:51Obviously, at that point, it wasn't sold to us like it would increase profit necessarily. No, it never is. It was sold to us as if it was a bit of a risk, actually, and, you know, at the end of the day, the royal's fortunes rise and fall with the value of the Crown Estate. Except that they built in to the arrangements for the sovereign grant an arrangement whereby the amount of money could never, ever go down. It could only stay the same or go up each year. Sounds like a great deal to me. The property element, which of course is a risk for everybody else, didn't apply to the royals. And indeed it did go down during Covid and it was made up for the Treasury, made up the difference during Covid.

41:26Norman, do you ever solve the mystery of who gave Andrew the 12 million quid that he then paid to his accuser, Virginia Roberts-Gufresne, now sadly deceased? No, I didn't. And it's difficult to find these matters out. But the rumour was that a large proportion of it came from the Queen. It may well be true. Is there anything wrong with that? Is there anything wrong with a mother helping out her son in such circumstances? No, not really. That was up to her. He was her favourite son, as we know, and no doubt she saw a situation whereby the damage to the royal family was going to be increased disproportionately if the court case went ahead in the States.

42:02So, I mean, it was both to help him and to avoid further controversy in the States, I imagine, if it did come from her. I mean, the more interesting question, if I may say so, about Andrew's finances is where does the rest of the money come from? Yes. And you look at the connections which he's made in dubious regimes across the world. Yes. When he was trade envoy, and it's quite clear to me when he was trade envoy, he was serving himself rather than serving Britain. And that was because of the places he chose to go. You know, when the Queen went somewhere or Charles went somewhere as Prince of Wales, these were the behests of the Foreign Office.

42:34They decided where these people should go in the national interest. Andrew made up his own arrangements as to where he was going. And if you ask the departments, as I did, where are you going to? They didn't really know where he was going. He was making up his own arrangements and suddenly disappeared for three or four days. You'd find you'd been in Abu Zhajian or somewhere like that. Well, he did sell Sunning Hill, which was the property, the marital property he owned with Fergie, for a sum well above the asking price, Tim, to a Kazakhstani businessman. He also had a relationship with Saif Gaddafi.

43:07Oh, yeah. son of Gaddafi, which again people questioned the wisdom of. There is a page in my book which... I'm sure there are some people saying to save... Do you really think you want to be hanging around with Prince Andrew? You could be tainted by this association. There's a page in my book which lists his unsavoury contacts. The chapter is Andrew's unsavoury circle at the end of it. Yes. Hang on, I'm just thumbing to that now. Andrew's unsavoury circle sounds filthy. Well, I don't know. It sounds like a perverse Christmas present, a sort of a cracker and cheese collection. Andrew's Unsavoury Circle.

43:38I've got to Andrew's Unsavoury Circle on page 186. It includes Jeffrey Epstein, Natch, Ghislaine Maxwell, yep. Yang Tembo, expelled from the UK for alleged spying activities. And the last one is Sarah Ferguson. Stop it. She's not actually listed of the Budgie Helicopter series. I tell you what, Norman, some of the subjects you've covered, you've covered this, you've also covered the strange death of David Kelly. What is the little sideline from politics of writing these very interesting books? But the running theme is transparency, right? Yes. In public life. You want to know what's going on, who's doing what, how much it costs us.

44:18Without sounding too grand about it, what's driven me in politics over the years is, first of all, justice and fairness. And secondly, transparency. I really do believe if we have transparency and accountability, then the abuses which occur, for example, MPs' expenses, don't occur. Because people abuse situations when they think they can get away with it. They don't do so, they think they're going to be caught. And that's the difference. And that's why accountability is so good at keeping people honest. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Exactly so. It's the motto of the Daily Tea. Norman Baker, thank you very much for coming in and discussing your book, Royal Bint National Debt.

44:54Thank you.

45:04Thank you.