Secrecy How Royals Rely On The Establishment To Keep Public In Dark About Wealth

From judges to ministers, officials have helped the monarch and family avoid scrutiny through judgments, legislation and exemption from freedom of information rules

- David Pegg Paul Lewis

How much will the coronation of King Charles III cost the British public? What tax rate will our new king pay on his private income? How many engagements have working royals” such as the dukes of Gloucester and Kent attended over the past five years? How much were they paid? How much rent do the princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, who are not working royals, pay for residences in royal palaces?

In recent weeks the Guardian has posed all these questions to Buckingham Palace. The response boils down to ask someone else”, work it out for yourself”, or simply you have no right to know”. We beg to differ.

Obituaries of Queen Elizabeth II uniformly applauded her calm stewardship of the realm, or her supposed non-interference in British politics. None mentioned another hallmark of the monarchy under her reign: entrenched secrecy, which has given rise to a culture in which the British people are deprived of the most basic information about the royal family.

Correspondence with the monarch or the heir, whether seismic or harmless, is banned from disclosure. Parliamentary criticism of conduct of royal family members, no matter how disgraced, is prohibited. The palace says the royal archives the repository of our constitutional monarchy’s history are open to any serious researcher”. However they are the private property of the Windsors, who grant their permission before researchers can examine them.

Nowhere is the refusal to let the light in more fiercely enforced by the royals than over financial matters. The wills of even obscure members of the family are censored by judicial decree. The royals closely guard the secrets of their financial wealth, insisting it is private” even when it is clearly born of their public roles.

It should not detract from Elizabeth II’s achievements to observe how this addiction to secrecy allowed the most unacceptable and corrosive practices to take root.