WHAT will have surprised viewers of the recent Dispatches programme, The King, the Prince, and Their Secret Millions, will not have been the wealth of the royal family, nor indeed the generosity of the British taxpayers who grant them millions every year. It will have been their greed.
 
Parliament for years has been far too lenient about the ways the royals exploit their “subjects,” those people whose best interests they all claim to hold so dear. Millions will be glued to their televisions on Christmas Day while the hypocrisy flows out in the king’s speech by the bucketload. Rest assured — apologies, there will be none.
 
The Guardian, to its credit, alerted readers a year ago about one feudal practice the greedy royal family uses to augment their fortunes, “bona vacantia,” where the crown makes millions by absorbing the assets of those who die without leaving a will.
 
This should have been consigned to history’s dustbin years ago, but it seems the royals’ greed won’t even allow them to give up this obnoxious habit, giving them, as it has done over the last 10 years, £60 million. Ex-MP Norman Baker aptly described it as a “royal fruit machine.”
 
The King’s Duchy of Lancaster estate and Prince William’s Duchy of Cornwall, both founded in the 14th century, claim the assets of all those who die in these regions intestate, if relatives cannot be found.

It happens when the last known residence of the dead person lies within what was known historically as Lancashire (or Cornwall) county palatine. You can imagine how profitable this proved for George VI when so many servicemen died fighting in the second world war for, you’ve guessed it, king and country.
 
Some fuss about this led to royal promises that the money would go to charity, but … again, you’re ahead of me, it’s been used instead to smarten up properties for rent, owned by the profit-at-all-cost duchies. So much for making charitable donations and so much more about the GRF lying and deceiving their “subjects.”
 
Does the most expensive monarchy in Europe have to behave in such a way? It’s not even that it has to pay taxes like the rest of us. The royal family pays no inheritance tax, so none of the vast wealth each monarch amasses gets handed to the state to benefit those subjects they all care so much about.

The late queen’s private wealth amounted, according to some estimates, to around £650m. The vast profits made by the aforementioned duchies, and we’re talking billions here, are not subject to corporation tax or capital gains tax.

Income tax wasn’t paid at all by Elizabeth II until a row erupted over who was going to pay to restore Windsor Castle after the fire in 1993. Now, it’s paid on a voluntary basis, with no receipts showing how much the royal family pays ever released.
 

NICE LITTLE EARNER 2: Offshore wind turbines at Barrow Offshore wind farm. Photo: Andy Dingley/CC

In 2011, after lobbying by the palace (yes, lobbying), the civil list, giving them £7.9m a year, was replaced by the sovereign grant, which is now over £86m annually and rising because of offshore wind energy deals relating to the royal-owned seabed. Recent research suggests that in the 10 years to 2022-23, the seabed earned the royals approximately £193m.
 
Charles received approximately £30m at the end of March this year from the Lancaster duchy’s annual profits, with William getting £24m from his duchy of Cornwall. Well, the latter does cover around 130,000 acres in 20 counties.
 
With so much wealth and annual income, why permit such stupidity, as revealed in the Dispatches programme, and risk reputation and some popularity?

What was revealed was that the duchies, unbelievably, have lucrative contracts with public bodies and charities.

These include a £37.5m agreement between the Cornwall duchy and the Ministry of Justice to lease Dartmoor Prison and a £11.4m deal between the duchy of Lancaster and Guy’s and St Thomas’s NHS Trust to rent a warehouse in London to store ambulances.

The very same health and justice services, crumbling under the weight of 14 years of Tory mismanagement and desperate for more funding from British taxpayers — or should we say the King’s subjects? It was the latter, of course, who coughed up £72m for the coronation extravaganza.
 
The duchies also charge the Ministry of Defence, which oversees Britain’s armed forces who swear an oath of allegiance to the King and promise to defend him, for practising on Dartmoor and for having access to moor and refuel the navy’s ships.
 
Why this next outrage hasn’t been on the front pages of every mainstream newspaper in the land beggars belief: the royals even charge rent on offices used by charities like Comic Relief, Marie Curie and, ironically, MacMillan Cancer Support, for which the King is a patron. It is all the more sickening when they give out such caring images of themselves.
 
Prince William refuses to provide an account of how his money is spent, except to say that it is used to support him and his family and to fund his philanthropic work.

Vocal about his environmental beliefs, William apparently takes in £800,000 a year in rent from a massive car showroom in Solihull bought by the Duchy in 2022.

The duchy has refused requests from Environmental Information Regulations to reveal details of all the land it owns, and it is only because of the Paragon Papers leak in 2017 that we know that millions have been invested by the duchy in offshore funds.
 
Rumours abound, too, about how the disgraced Prince Andrew gets his money; no doubt, his relationship with a Chinese “spy” will prove to have been lucrative — greed, after all, is in his genes.
 
What is clear is that Parliament has a duty to Britain’s taxpayers to investigate. It is far too deferential and has ignored the greed of the royals for too long. The public accounts committee must insist Charles and William attend Parliament to answer questions on how they are amassing even greater wealth at the expense not only of the taxpayers but of our underfunded public services.