Something I still think about from time to time is that when Prince Philip passed away in 2021, he reportedly left behind a fortune somewhere in the vicinity of £30 million. We still don’t know how his estate was allocated because the British courts hushed it up really quickly, and his will won’t be made public for another 97 years. I bring that up because in addition to somehow accumulating £30 million while he was a working royal, Philip also got “special funding” from the British government to operate, to have a small staff and to travel. He received an annual lump sum of £369,000 throughout his marriage to QEII. And now… Queen Camilla will not receive that same amount.

The Queen will not receive Prince Philip-style personal funding from Parliament to fund her official duties, a report has confirmed. The late Duke of Edinburgh received an annual lump sum of £369,000 until his death, despite a change in the way the Royal family’s activities were funded by the taxpayer. However, a National Audit Office (NAO) report into the Royal household’s finances revealed that the cost of the Queen’s activities is met via the Sovereign Grant, with no additional financial input from the taxpayer.

The UK’s independent public spending watchdog on Friday published its spending and accountability report, examining the funding structures of the Royal family as part of its work to improve transparency. It noted that as the King’s “future programme of activities” had yet to be determined, his reign could “alter future funding needs in substantial ways” given that Elizabeth II had cut back on events and travel in recent years.

“Parliament provided Prince Phillip with a separate annuity worth £359,000 per annum,” it said. “Queen Camilla will not receive a separate annuity and the Queen’s activities will be funded from the grant.”

The old-style Civil List, the mechanism used to pay the late Queen and working members of the Royal family via Government grants to cover official expenses, was replaced in 2012 by the Sovereign Grant, which is based on a percentage of the Crown Estate’s profits. But the new legislation kept a provision for the Duke, who retired in 2017 and died in 2021, to carry on receiving his annuity for his lifetime. He was mentioned by name in the retained section of the previous Civil List Act 1952 and therefore the annuity is not transferable to Camilla, who would require new legislation to receive such funds.

The Sovereign Grant is reviewed every five years but currently stands at 25 per cent of the Crown Estate’s net surplus two years prior, which equated to £86.3 million for 2022-23. Ten per cent of that is used to fund the refurbishment of Buckingham Palace.

[From The Telegraph]

It’s very curious. Why was this arrangement made for Philip in the first place? Why wasn’t he always funded through the then-Civil List, and then the Sovereign Grant? It makes sense that Camilla wouldn’t get her own special funding, but it makes less sense that they kept Philip’s separate operational cost for decades. The only thing that makes any sense to me is the generational argument about husbands and wives, where it would have “looked bad” (at the time) for QEII to have authority over her husband’s finances. Now the worry is that King Charles is going to cut off all of his relatives and give everything to Camilla.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.