Many people will be astonished to learn that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, who was rightly removed from his palatial residence, Royal Lodge in Windsor Great Park, could be entitled to over ÂŁ300,000 in compensation.
This is because when the King sent his brother packing to a substantial farmhouse in Sandringham, the disgraced Andrew was evicted without sufficient notice.
The fact that he was living in Royal Lodge â which is owned by the Crown Estate â at a rent which was a fraction of the market value does not alter the legal position. The terms of his lease allow him ÂŁ301,967.66.
We know this because of a National Audit Office report on the living arrangements of members of the Royal Family, prompted by Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee’s inquiry in the wake of the scandal of Royal Lodge.
In truth, Andrew would be liable to dilapidation costs and all the indications are that these could easily be in excess of ÂŁ300,000. So he might not get anything.
But the important matter here is not whether a narrowly legalistic reading of a lease should allow Mr Mountbatten-Windsor a single penny. It is the appalling stench surrounding his domestic set-up and the fact that the compensation package should ever have existed in the first place.
For what the NAO report lays bare is that royal living conditions are, in financial terms, very favourable.
We learn that Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie, for instance, have been living at grand palace properties with rents set at 60 per cent of market value. And that, even then, they do not pay a penny because the late Queen used to stump up for their rents and now King Charles does.
Beatrice and Eugenie have been living with rents that were set at 60 per cent of market value
There has to be a root and branch overhaul in the way Britain finances the Royal Family
There’s also the fact that many members of the Royal Family, including Andrew before he moved to Sandringham, have been subletting properties and potentially pocketing the proceeds.
None of the details in themselves give us grounds for wanting to abolish the monarchy. But the story as a whole â and this is the really damaging thing â gives strength to republicans.
At the moment, in spite of Andrew’s reputation, the monarchy is still popular. People feel sympathy with the old King in his illness, and they want to give brave Kate and Prince William a chance.
And up to this point, it has still been possible to see Andrew as the Black Sheep of the Royal Family, whose behaviour was an embarrassment to a group of otherwise public-spirited individuals: the ‘working’ royals.
While he was Trade Envoy he was coarse, rude, foul-mouthed and inefficient. He was also costing us, the taxpayers, disgracefully large sums of money.
His gross extravagance alongside that of his preposterous ex-wife Fergie was a matter of legend even before the two of them were mercilessly exposed by his biographer Andrew Lownie in his book Entitled.
The Jeffrey Epstein files made it clear that these two sleaze-bag royals were, to put it mildly, wildly indiscreet friends of a really dangerous sex-predator and blackmailing networker. Even so, the damage could to a certain extent be confined to the Yorks rather than infecting the rest of the monarchy.
The questions about his living arrangements in Royal Lodge, Windsor, however, drew public attention to a more general fact. Namely, that Andrew was not alone in enjoying extraordinary domestic privileges.
When the public came to learn the terms of his residence at Royal Lodge, questions began to emerge about other members of the Royal Family. Who was funding them? And just how ‘entitled’ were the ‘good’ royals to their various grace and favour residences?
As it turns out, they appear to have been very entitled indeed. And unless the royals are careful, this could become a serious problem.
Because if they lose public favour, in this so-called age of equality, their attitude to money and property will be used as the weapon to bring them down. Any attempt at evading transparency will compound the problem.
This is why royalists should welcome full public scrutiny of their financial affairs. As should the royals themselves, even though they might find such scrutiny uncomfortable.
Until quite recently, it has been the convention that the royal finances should be swathed in secrecy.
But that has changed now we have learned that Andrew and other royals have been heavily subsidised by the taxpayer as they lived in properties belonging to the Crown Estate whose net profits are surrendered to the Treasury in return for some of the sum being used to publicly fund the Royal Family.
Yet not only was Andrew allowed to live cheaply at Royal Lodge, but he was allowed to potentially pocket the rent from three cottages that came with it as his own. He was not the only one.
Edward and Sophie Edinburgh live at the enormous Bagshot Park at what is in effect a peppercorn rent. Just like Andrew in Royal Lodge, their lease allows them to sublet parts of the house, and three houses on their estate.
The rent goes not to the Crown Estate but, potentially, into their pockets. This can not be justified on any level. Matters are perhaps even more damaging when it comes to the favourable rates granted to non-working royals such as Princesses Eugenie and Beatrice.
Eleven members of the Royal Family live in ‘grace and favour’ apartments in St James’s Palace and Kensington Palace. It is now vital that every one of them is able to justify their preferable terms.
These preferential domestic arrangements make clear that the Royal Family are only at the beginning of a very steep learning curve.
They must learn that the public, who in general are well-disposed to them personally, and to the idea of monarchy, will not go on allowing them to live luxuriously while so many of their fellow-Britons are feeling the pinch.
There has to be a root and branch overhaul of the way in which Britain finances its Royal Family.
It is too late to expect King Charles III to understand the point of what I am saying. He is a master of extravagance.
While he was Prince of Wales, and therefore also Duke of Cornwall, he continued to suppose that the revenues of the Duchy were his personal property, enabling him to buy Highgrove, and a retreat in Romania. As well as Sandringham and Balmoral, which are his personal property, he has Buckingham Palace, St James’s Palace and Windsor Castle as his official residences. In Scotland he has Birkhall and the Castle of Mey.
His son Prince William has begun to see the truth that the income from the Duchy of Cornwall is in effect public money. Whether he is right to seek to sell off large slices of the estate â he recently announced he would get rid of 20 per cent of its 128,000 acres to fund worthy causes â is another matter.
What the NAO report has shown is the extent to which the seven working, and many other non-working, royals are still living in a past where no questions were asked.
The majority of people in Great Britain are in favour of a monarchy. But we are not in favour of a Royal Family whose sense of entitlement blinds them to a situation which has become utterly intolerable.
