Former Duke of York Andrew’s scandal has landed the British monarchy in new trouble as the Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee will later this year launch an inquiry into its finances.
According to a report by the AFP, the committee will launch an inquiry after reports that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor had been paying only a token “peppercorn” rent on Royal Lodge, a 30-room mansion on the Windsor estate, since he moved in in 2003.
Andrew has reportedly moved out of the Royal Lodge on the directives of King Charles last week.
The report further says the Windsor estate is managed by the independent property company, the Crown Estate, a commercial business that operates separately to the government and the royal household.
It is not the monarch’s private property, and its profits go entirely into the public purse.
Meanwhile, the date of the parliamentary inquiry is not yet known, but in a letter to the Crown Estate, the committee chairman Geoffrey Clifton-Brown said MPs were “concerned” whether the lease arrangements for Royal Lodge were “achieving the best value for money”.
“Any reduced income … reduces the Crown Estate’s annual surplus and therefore would be a cost to taxpayers,” Geoffrey added, asking a series of questions about the arrangements.
Moreover, a PhD researcher focusing on the constitutional monarchy at Lancaster University, has said the inquiry “marks a shift in the constitutional balance between parliament and the monarchy.”
“For a long time, the monarchy has escaped scrutiny, but things are changing,” she told AFP.
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