---

Civil List

This has been a most enjoyable debate. With the need to refurbish some of the royal households with up-to-date wallpaper, we have learned that the fortunes of Osborne & Little might now increase. We heard from my right hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor some historical evidence of our hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner) making interventions from a sedentary position when this issue was last discussed, in the 1970s. People listening to this debate from outside this place might have felt that some of the speeches by right hon. and hon. Members were delivered not so much from a sedentary position but, as it were, from a kneeling position, if that were possible in the House. I would say gently to the hon. Member for Northampton North (Michael Ellis) that some of us think that the land in this country that is not in specific private ownership belongs to the people. For us, the notion that the royal family is signing generous cheques to the taxpayer sits a little oddly. I want to raise one substantial point today. The Chancellor and the shadow Chancellor said that we needed to look back to 1760, but if my history—learned from Linda Colley and other historians of the period—serves me right, it was actually a cunning manoeuvre by the late King George III that substantially increased royal revenues, rather than the act of generosity that it is sometimes presented as. One part of the motion, which I think the House will support, that worries me conceptually is the notion that the time of transition from one monarch to another is not the time for reflection on the arrangements that we want for our head of state. The notion that we are going to write down a settlement that cannot be debated for another 200 years might therefore need some reflection on Second Reading. I respect the Queen and I have travelled with other members of the royal family, although I hate the term ““minor royals””—it is offensive to the very hard-working men and women who give a lot of their time to public service. If I can, I always welcome in person any of them who come to my constituency, because they are always well received and well liked. Her Majesty came to the Advance Manufacturing Centre in Catcliffe with Prince Philip last November and stood for an hour asking good questions. I was amazed at her stamina and her presence; the visit really cheered up all the people there. This just goes to show that 85 really is the new 55. None the less, how does one justify 159 butlers, valets, cooks, dressers, housekeepers and the rest for Prince Charles? [Interruption.] We are all reading the memoirs written by the father of the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) in The Times, and there is a lovely entry today about how he and Rupert Murdoch managed to cheer up the Queen at a lunch back in the 1970s; I would not have minded eavesdropping on that. But why on earth, when we keep a royal flight, is Prince Charles taking a jet trip from Mr Joe Allbritton, who is not British at all but some kind of American oligarch and millionaire—