Spending review: Royal family funding set for change
Wednesday, 20 October 2010 4:59 PM
By politics.co.uk staff
The way the state pays for the upkeep of the monarchy is to be fundamentally reformed as part of the fallout of the comprehensive spending review.
Chancellor George Osborne told MPs a new sovereign support grant would be introduced, linked to a portion of the Crown Estate, "so that my successors do not have to return to this issue so often".
Mr Osborne has imposed a one-year cash freeze on the civil list, the current system used to pay for the royal family.
Total royal household spending will then fall by 14% in 2012/13. Grants to the household will be frozen in cash terms, the chancellor added.
A temporary additional facility worth £1 million will help pay for the Diamond Jubilee, however.
It follows a ten-year settlement in the civil list which expired this year. No new settlement for a longer-term deal had been established before the coalition government entered office, Mr Osborne said.
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