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Duchy of Cornwall and the Queen’s Duchy of Lancaster merged with the Crown Estates
into one entity, the Public Estates; that all royal income should be liable to all tax law,
and that royal expenditure under the renamed Civil List should be subject to five-yearly
reviews by the House of Commons. Finally, a Labour member of the Committee, Douglas
Houghton, proposed that the royal household should be reconstituted as a government
department. His intention was to avoid the necessity for the Queen repeatedly to ask the
Government for expenditure on her household incurring the stigma of being seen to get
large pay rises. Houghton argued:
The central issue appears to be one of control. Who is to be in ultimate control of the Royal Household? Is it
to be the Queen or Parliament?… If the Monarchy could manage without coming to Parliament, there could
be only one answer… she would run her own Household and pay for it… [but] the expenses of a
constitutional monarchy are the responsibility of the state.
Elizabeth, through Lord Cobbold, made it absolutely clear that Houghton’s plan was
unacceptable:
although the [royal] Household is in one sense a Department of State, it is also a family administration and
the two things are slightly intermingled and it is not a straightforward department… It is almost an item of
principle that the Queen regards these people as her own servants and they regard themselves as her
servants. I think they have the idea of the dignity of the Monarchy, which is supported by the idea that the
Queen is controlling her own Household.
When it came to the debates in the House of Commons, the Conservative majority saw
to it that not one of the Select Committee’s recommendations was adopted. Elizabeth got
her Civil List increased in 1972 from £475,000 to £980,000, with corresponding
increases for other members of her family, and retained control of her household, but
the revelations that the Civil List was merely the tip of the iceberg as far as the cost of
the monarchy was concerned since so much of the expenditure was absorbed by various
government departments laid the foundations for future trouble. (According to a recent
expert, Philip Hall, the Civil List accounted for only about 30 per cent of government
expenditure on the monarchy, with the other 70 per cent coming from departments such
as Defence and Environment.) While the general public remained unaware of this and
the subject of the Queen’s immunity from taxation was not yet an issue, the need for the
rise in the Civil List was not generally understood. According to an opinion poll taken at
the time of the December debates, 31 per cent of Conservative and 74 per cent of
Labour supporters thought the proposed increase too high.
Inflation rocketing after the rise in oil prices ensured that by 1975 the situation had
again become precarious. Once again Elizabeth had to apply to the Government for
help, her Prime Minister this time being Harold Wilson, now in his second and last term.
Obligingly, the Labour Government arranged for yearly upratings of the Civil List to
maintain its value in real terms. Once again this resulted in disagreeable debate in the
House of Commons, with rebellious members on the Labour side demanding full
disclosure of the facts about the Queen’s personal fortune and tax immunity and