---

Sovereign Grant Bill

The shadow Chancellor concluded his remarks by saying that he had looked up the Commons Journal for 1760. He is, of course, a very modern man. I went a little earlier and looked up the Commons Journal for 1575. I thank the Library for its assistance in helping me to find what I was looking for. I was looking for the behaviour of the House towards a Mr Peter Wentworth, a man who represented a Cornish seat and had the temerity to criticise the then sovereign, Elizabeth I. He said that"““none is without fault, no, not our noble Queen””." For this ““prepared speech”” and"““divers offensive matters touching Her Majesty””" he was taken prisoner to the Tower and held there for a month at the insistence of the House of Commons. I must say that I think they knew how to behave in 1575, and it is a model for us today. I want to come on to who really owns the Crown Estate, because that is important in this discussion. That is why I intervened on the Chancellor, and I am grateful to him for taking my intervention. It is important to remember that the Crown Estate is the property of the sovereign in an ultimate sense, though gifted for a reign. The importance of that is that the sovereign therefore has a right to ask for money. One might think that they would get the money anyway, but sovereigns have been promised money by Parliament that has been stopped. One just needs to go back to Charles II, who handed over all his feudal dues to the Government for £100,000 a year in perpetuity for all his heirs and successors. I am not sure that that £100,000 has been paid once in the last three hundred and some odd years. The Crown, by virtue of owning the Crown Estate, can guarantee that it is entitled to a revenue. The fact that at the beginning of each reign it could theoretically demand the Crown Estate back is important reassurance and a reassertion of that right.