SCOTTISH taxpayers contribute upwards of £35 million a year to the royal family costs, but get little financial benefit in return, according to a republican pressure group.
The claim comes as concern grows over whether public funds will go towards paying any of the financial deal Prince Andrew has agreed to settle the case against him.
News of the settlement, thought to be in the region of £12m, came as it was revealed the Metropolitan Police has launched an investigation into claims honours were offered in exchange for donations to Prince Charles’s charity foundation.
Part of the money given by the Saudi billionaire was given to the charitable trust that runs Castle of Mey in Caithness. A sum of £370,000 was donated to the trust, and a woodland at the late Queen Mother’s Highland pile was then named after Dr Mahfouz Marei Mubarak bin Mahfouz.
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The controversies surrounding the two princes are further evidence the royals are an unnecessary expense, according to campaign group Republic.
The latest official figures put the sovereign grant that funds the royals at £51.5m in 2020-21, with an additional grant of £34.4m to pay for the current refurbishment of Buckingham Palace. Separately, the Queen receives surplus money from the Duchy of Lancaster Estate, which came to £22.3m in 2020-21.
However, Republic’s own research puts the total cost of the royals to the British public as at least £345m, with £35m contributed from Scotland.
The group says the higher figure is due to hidden costs such as security, the costs to councils of royal visits, lost income and lost opportunities to raise revenue.
Defenders of the royals claim they bring in money to the economy as a tourist attraction but Graham Smith, chief executive of Republic, said there was “no evidence” of that.
“Certainly they don’t in Scotland,” he said. “No-one goes to Scotland in the expectation of seeing the royals.”
He added that even if the Queen helped Prince Andrew pay his settlement from her private income, that was still unacceptable.
A royal source has said the Queen has already made a £2m donation to the charity run by Virginia Giuffre, who claimed she was forced to have sex with Andrew on three occasions in 2001, after being trafficked by his paedophile friend Jeffrey Epstein and his girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell.
The source said the Queen made the donation to help Andrewsettle his civil sex case and would come from the Duchy of Lancaster account.
“We pay her a personal income of more than £20m a year and if that is then being spent on bailing out her son to avoid court, that is highly questionable,” said Smith.
“You would think we might be paying her that amount of money so she could do something useful with it.”
Smith also backed calls for Prince Andrew to be stripped of his Earl of Inverness title.
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“He should not have any titles at all,” he said. “Really he should be in a police station answering questions, because despite the settlement, we still don’t know whether he is guilty or not of sexual abuse. The FBI still want to talk to him as a witness in the Ghislaine Maxwell and Epstein cases, and the fact he has agreed to settle with Virginia Giuffre must prompt some kind of suspicion something happened – so why aren’t the Met police investigating?”
THE Met has announced it will investigate the role of the Prince’s Foundation over allegations honours and British citizenships were promised in exchange for donations. Charles’s former close aide, Michael Fawcett, is said to be the facilitator and left his post last autumn when alleged details of the arrangement emerged.
Charles awarded Mahfouz a CBE in 2016, who’d donated more than £1.5m to various royal projects, before private correspondence emerged appearing to suggest that Fawcett had promised to help secure honours and British citizenship in return for the donations.Clarence House has said it had no knowledge of the alleged offer. Mahfouz has also denied the allegations.
Scotland Yard confirmed an investigation was under way, saying: “The decision follows an assessment of a September 2021 letter. This related to media reporting alleging offers of help were made to secure honours and citizenship for a Saudi national.
“There have been no arrests or interviews under caution.”
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