Queen’s £100m a year windfarm windfall

As controversial book shines light on Royals’ wealth

THE QUEEN and Prince Charles could make more than £ 100 million a year from the huge expansion of offshore windfarms – thanks to a change in the way that the monarchy is funded.

The green energy earnings of the Royal Family are being significantly boosted by an auction, which formally began last week, for the biggest offshore windpower development in the world.

If they were still being paid by the longestablished Civil List, the Royals would not have benefited. However, the then Chancellor George Osborne replaced it in 2012 with the Sovereign Grant.

Crucially, the deal gives the Queen 25 per cent of the profits from the Crown Estate, which owns the seabed within Britain’s territorial waters that extend almost 14 miles from the coast. The Crown Estate charges rent equal to two per cent of revenues for use of its seabeds for windfarms and collected £41 million last year. It will also collect ‘option fees’ each year from successful bidders for the five new highly lucrative concessions.

In a comprehensive examination of Royal finances, former Liberal Democrat Minister and Privy Counsellor Norman Baker describes in a new book how the abolition of the Civil List ‘has proved hugely profitable’ for the Queen.

He said that the windpower development ‘will provide a bumper windfall of hundreds of millions for the Queen, a vast sum that before George Osborne’s disastrous intervention would have gone back to the Treasury’. Serialised today in The Mail on Sunday, Mr Baker’s book also reveals:

Questions about how the Queen Mother amassed a £70 million legacy remain unanswered because the law prevents scrutiny of hers and other Royal wills;

Princess Margaret disposed of £12 million of assets to her family – including her home on Mustique – to minimise death duties;

The National Archive holds 3,629 secret files on the Royal Family;

Between 2001 and 2010, the Civil List was set annually at £7.9 million, but under the new system last year’s payout was a staggering £82.8 million;

Profits from valuable London sites owned by the Duchy of Cornwall, including the Oval cricket ground, go to the Prince of Wales.

Prince Charles is a vociferous campaigner for renewable energy sources but is opposed to turbines being erected on land – particularly near his own homes. He has described windfarms as a ‘horrendous blot on the landscape’ and has refused to have any built at his Highgrove estate in Gloucestershire or on the Duchy of Cornwall estate. He has, however, expressed enthusiasm for siting them offshore.

The auction of seabed licences is the first for ten years and is expected to be highly competitive as companies seek to develop projects in UK waters, the world’s biggest market for offshore wind.

The Mail on Sunday revealed in 2010 how the boost to Royal f i nances had qui e t l y s l i pped through as part of that year’s Comprehensive Spending Review.

In what one source described last night as a ‘masterstroke’ by Prince Charles’s then closest adviser Sir Michael Peat, 250 years of history was overturned by scrapping the arrangement under which taxpayers’ money was been used to fund the Royals and pay for the upkeep of their palaces.

Industry experts believe if the Government’s wind energy target – to source a third of electricity from offshore wind by 2030 – is met, the Queen could collect more t han £ 100 million annually. At present it sources eight per cent from wind. Over the past ten years the Crown Estate has returned a total of £2.8 billion to the Exchequer – including a record £343.5 million last year – which has been invested in public services.

As managers of t he s eabed around England, Wales and Northern Ireland, the Crown Estate says it ‘works closely with industry and stakeholders to identify s i t es f or s ustainable develop - ment, awarding seabed rights for offshore renewable energy, as well as cables pipelines and marine aggregates’.

The level of the Sovereign Grant is reviewed every five years with the next review is in 2021. The Civil List financed the monarchy from the time of King George III. Under the new system, the Queen’s finances are subjected to the same detailed audit and examination by MPs as Whitehall departments to ensure that they provide ‘value for money’.

When the new rules were announced, Mr Osborne, who was then Chancellor of the Exchequer, said the Monarch’s budget would rise and fall in line with the wider economy. Ministers can block any excessive rises in the Queen’ s income and set aside reserves to protect members of the Royal Family from steep falls in their budget.

‘A vast sum would have gone to the Treasury’