Royal family costs taxpayers ‘half a billion a year’, claim anti-monarchists
Anti-monarchy campaigners have claimed the “true cost” of the royal family to the public is more than £500 million a year.
Republic, an organisation which campaigns for an elected head of state, has published a report analysing existing data, studies and newspaper reports about royal finances and concluded the monarchy costs £510 million annually.
Official royal accounts released earlier this year revealed the monarchy is to receive a boost of more than £45 million, with a 53% jump in its annual income to more than £130 million.
Crown Estate
Soaring profits from the Crown Estate to £1.1 billion mean the taxpayer-funded Sovereign Grant, which supports the official duties of the royal family, will increase from £86.3 million in 2024/2025 to £132 million in 2025/2026.
Officials have said the increase will be used to help fund the final stages of the 10-year, £369 million reservicing programme, updating Buckingham Palace’s electrical cabling, plumbing and heating system.
Graham Smith, chief executive of Republic, said: “If (Chancellor) Rachel Reeves thinks tough decisions are needed in these difficult times, she needs to start with the royals.
“We’re being told the Budget will be painful.
“Well if that’s true, the cuts must start at the top.
“How can we talk about cutting the winter fuel allowance while wasting half a billion pounds on the royals?
“How does the Government defend this rhetoric of painful decisions when the royals cost us enough to pay 18,000 NHS nurses?
“The Sovereign Grant is spiralling out of control, set to rise by another £45 million a year.
“Yet the true cost of the monarchy is well over half a billion pounds.”
Republic claims the biggest cost was an estimated £150 million for royal security and a further estimated £96 million in “lost revenue”, the report argues, as royal residences “occupied by the royal family cannot be used to their full potential by the state”.
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It’s the trend, particularly since covid, the rich getting richer. Look at how much the top billionaires have grown richer over the last few years. It’s been reported that over 50% of the world’s wealth is in the hands of just 1% of its population, how can we justify this? Why do we need a royal family? It’s time they were scrapped or we sold them to the Americans, they love them.
£500,000,000. That’s what half a billion looks like in figures!! Do the royals care? Not a chance. They will keep taking as long as the plebs keep giving. Roll on the revolution.
And exactly who will figurehead the country? An elected official as in France, Germany, they cost as much as our royals, can you imagine Tony Blair or Gordon Brown or even Borris, living in palaces leading the nation in to the future or God forbid kier starmer as he knows best and would cost more in freebies, just look across the channel at our nearest nabours then further afield to the Russian state. If anyone can come up with a better, cheaper, more reliable and honest system, you will get my vote.
Why do we need expensive figureheads? Our lazy royals and probably hundreds of their generations to come could live comfortably on what they have already got for hundreds of years without us giving them a penny more. There are people sleeping in doorways, and so many needy cases. So much for having figureheads eh?
There is a simple way to get rid of the Royals for Wales to have independence without them royals being head of state but a a FREE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC
The Royal Family should be replaced by historical re-enactors at a publicly-owned Buck House. I am also prepared to offer my services and will ask only a modest fee to “Declare This Bridge Open” or wave from a limousine. The figure may be debatable
but a slice of the cost of the royals would transform the Welsh budget. At the VERY LEAST the income from the Crown Estate should be devolved – as in Scotland.