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Sovereign Grant Bill

I will move on shortly to some of the issues that the hon. Gentleman raised two weeks ago on the use of accommodation on the royal estate, for example by the MOD, and say something on that and other areas of royal spending. The Bill establishes a distinction between the royal family's public expenditure and their private finances. It is a long-established principle of the system that their private finances, for example from the Duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall, are their private money. There are checks and balances on that, such as the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster having to be a member of the Government. We are saying that all the royal family's public expenditure, which goes to their official duties and those parts of the royal estate that are not part of their private income or assets, should all now be auditable by the National Audit Office and that the Public Accounts Committee should be able to look at it. That is a fairly dramatic increase in the transparency before Parliament.