It has taken a veteran Labour peer to say out loud what millions of people have been muttering for years.
Lord Foulkes rose in the House of Lords today to ask the question Westminster has ducked for decades: are we paying too much for the royal family? He had to fight to ask it at all, because Parliament’s rules bar peers from casting “reflections” on the Royal Family.
The reason? The Sovereign Grant, which pays for the King’s official duties and the running of the royal household, ballooned from £86.3million in 2024-25 to £132.1million in 2025-26. That’s a £45.8million increase in just 12 months, and it doesn’t include royal security, which is paid for separately and never disclosed.
The rise comes down to a dreamt-up self-calculating formula George Osborne introduced as chancellor in 2011, which set the grant as a percentage of Crown Estate profits.
If the royals didn’t have enough, the reigning British monarch owns the Crown Estate and also has rights over the entire seabed. So when wind farm developers paid huge option fees, its profits soared, and so did the royals’ income.
Those wind farms are now being built, the fees have dried up and profits have fallen back. You might expect the grant to fall too. Instead, a new deal with the Treasury will lift the royals’ share from 12 per cent of the profits to 20 per cent, with no review until 2031.
When profits boomed, the Palace cashed in. When they dropped, the rules were changed so it wouldn’t lose out.
Try squaring that with families across the country choosing between heating and eating, while the royals live in palaces and castles and fly by private jet.
Now I’m not suggesting the royals should start travelling by bus, but when the King’s own fortune is estimated at anywhere between £680million and almost £2billion, it’s hard to stomach.
Add to this: when the late Queen died, her private wealth passed to Charles without a penny of inheritance tax being paid – an exemption no other family in Britain gets. Plenty of people will ask why a family that rich needs more than £130million a year of public money.
The Palace will point out that the Crown Estate has handed £5.1billion to the Treasury over the past ten years, and that state visits and royal tours do a great deal for British trade and Britain’s standing abroad. Both points are true.
But that doesn’t explain why, during a cost of living crisis, the rules have been rewritten to protect royal income while everyone else is told to tighten their belts.
The monarchy survives only as long as the public backs it, and the King knows it. Freezing the grant, publishing the cost of royal security and paying more of the Crown’s official bills himself would go a long way.
Just where does the King draw the line on his disgraced brother Andrew?
After declaring “the law must take its course” following his arrest earlier this year on allegations of misconduct in public office, Charles has just signed a cheque worth £1.5million to bail him out of yet another mess.
It is nearly a year since October 17, when Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor announced he would stop using his royal titles, including Duke of York, over the furore surrounding his relationship with the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The Palace of course hoped that would be the end of it, but in reality it was only the start.
Within a fortnight, the King was forced to strip him of his title of prince and ordered him out of Royal Lodge – the 30 bedroom mansion he left in such a state that Charles had to “loan” him the money to settle an urgent renovations bill on his exit. Considering Andrew claims he is potless, good luck getting that back!
The release of the Epstein files in January in the US unearthed shocking fresh emails and photographs, including one of Andrew leaning over a woman lying on the floor.
On his 66th birthday in February, he was arrested and questioned for more than 11 hours. Despite living in exile, at the expense of the King on his Norfolk estate, Andrew remains under investigation in the UK and still refuses to give evidence to prosecutors in the US probing Epstein’s crimes.
He is still the one problem the King cannot make go away.
Sussexes all tied up in Notts
Harry and Meghan will be hoping for a warm welcome in Nottingham on Thursday, on their first joint public outing since moving back to Britain in August.
It is no coincidence they have picked the city. It was where they made their first official appearance together in December 2017, days after announcing their engagement, when hundreds lined the streets to greet them.
Nine years on, a lot has changed. They are no longer working royals, the King has made clear they are private citizens and Harry is not speaking to William. Winning back that goodwill will take more than a trip down memory lane.
Waleses put heads together for maximum impact
The Prince and Princess of Wales are being seen together more and more, and next month I can confirm Catherine will travel to Mumbai with William for his Earthshot Prize. It will be only her second trip abroad since her cancer diagnosis, after her visit to Italy in May, and the couple’s first official overseas trip together since the Earthshot Prize in Boston in 2022.
The past two years have been brutal for the family, and seeing Catherine back on the world stage alongside her husband will delight their many supporters. After everything they have been through, things are finally looking up.
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