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Sovereign Grant Bill

No, I am not suggesting that somehow they should be taken out of the military while they do these duties, because there is an important link between the royal household and the military, but I do not think that they should be paid for from the defence budget while they are on these duties. In trying to get full transparency in what the royal household costs and therefore what the sovereign grant should be, we need to know about all these other costs so that we assess what is needed to support the sovereign in her work as Head of State. There needs to be transparency. The Chancellor said earlier that the NAO could look at this, but there is nothing in the Bill that says it will look at costs in kind in relation to the Ministry of Defence and other budgets. If we are to ensure that the royal household has the money needed for the royal family to do their official duties, it is important that there is transparency and that the costs do not fall on the Ministry of Defence, for example. Some people argue that there should be a cap every year on the sovereign grant. That is possibly a bit too blunt a mechanism. I accept what the Chancellor has said about the size of the reserve. However, if we are to ensure that the efficiencies that have taken place so far in the royal household continue, we need to consider not only how the sovereign grant, but the reserve, is spent each year. It would be quite easy to run the reserve down each year to ensure that more money is needed every year. There needs to be some scrutiny of exactly how the reserve is spent. The next issue is what the sovereign grant is spent on. At the moment, some of the arrangements are totally inefficient in that the Government are paying the royal household and then being paid back for services. There is a debate to be had about whether the royal palaces are royal households or part of the history of this country that should be paid for by the taxpayer. The places currently covered by grant in aid are Buckingham palace, St James's palace, Clarence house, the Royal Mews, the residence and offices in the area of Kensington palace, the royal paddock at Hampton Court, and Windsor castle and the buildings in Home park and Great park. The list is quite well defined. It would be interesting to know whether the sovereign grant will be limited to being spent on those places or there will be flexibility to use the money for other households. In 1990, Marlborough house was added to the list of properties that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport supports through grant in aid. To ensure that we are not cross-subsidising things that are already covered, it will be important for the Chancellor or the trustees to clarify exactly what the sovereign grant could be spent on; otherwise, other properties that are not currently covered by the civil list or grant in aid payments could be included. That is an important point. I take the point made by the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) about the titillation factor in looking at what the royal household spends money on. However, the core point is that this is Government—public—money. If we do not want the royal family to be denigrated but rather to gain support for them, one way would be to ensure that the sovereign grant is well spent and that people see that that is the case. We accept that some items are very expensive to undertake, such as the upkeep of royal palaces and—I have to agree with the hon. Member for Gainsborough—the way in which people have to travel for security reasons, but there must be an emphasis on ensuring that the taxpayer gets value for money. That is a way of strengthening support for the sovereign and the work that she and her family do on behalf of the nation. If we going to get this right, and the Bill is a good attempt at trying to do so, we must ensure that we not only get value for money but are very clear and honest to everybody about all moneys that are spent on supporting the sovereign in the work that she does.