Royal Revenues
Phillip Hall analyses the finances of Britain’s monarchy, arguing that those who claim that the royals pay for themselves are misusing history.
Some time this year the government will make new arrangements to pay the Queen's Civil List for the next ten years and, judging from past experience, this will generate a good deal of media attention. The Civil List is nowadays spent mainly on royal household salaries, though originally, as the name suggests, it paid for the expenses of civil (as opposed to military) government. The whole issue of the cost of the monarchy was the subject of much critical comment in the media throughout the 1990s - involving such issues as the tax-exemption that the Queen formerly enjoyed, the expense of the royal train and the upkeep of the palaces.
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