<\/p>\n
It was a celebratory multimillion pound scheme to mark the beginning of King Charles III\u2019s reign. Free portraits of the king<\/a> were offered to all public bodies \u2013 every town hall, university, hospital and even jobcentre \u2013 so the new monarch\u2019s visage could gaze down on his subjects.<\/p>\n The initiative would provide \u201ca reminder of the example set by our ultimate public servant\u201d, said the then Tory deputy prime minister, Oliver Dowden.<\/p>\n But the current government is proving coy about where exactly any of the images of King Charles ended up after it admitted more than 46,000 public institutions had showed no interest. In what has been described as an \u201cabsurd\u201d decision about a scheme to distribute large portraits of the king to be hung in public view, it is refusing to say which schools, hospitals and job centres did request them, saying it could \u201cgive rise to controversy\u201d and create \u201cnegative public perception\u201d.<\/p>\n More than \u00a32.7m was spent meeting requests for the pictures and while take-up was patchy, more than 20,000 images of Charles in a medal-laden Royal Navy uniform were sent out \u2013 a 31% hit rate.<\/p>\n But the reluctance to reveal where they ended up has emerged from a Guardian freedom of information request which the Cabinet Office has been resisting for many months. Last October it rejected the request for the information by arguing disclosure would be an \u201cactionable breach of confidence\u201d. In effect it implied a public authority which requested a portrait of the king to display in public might sue the government for revealing that it had done so.<\/p>\n When the Guardian appealed on the grounds that \u201crequesting a portrait of the king funded by the taxpayer for the express purpose of being publicly displayed cannot reasonably be considered a confidential matter\u201d, it dropped that justification and changed tack to claim release would \u201cprejudice the effective conduct of public affairs\u201d, a different exemption under the Freedom of Information Act.<\/p>\n It said disclosure \u201cwould be likely to trigger questions about why certain organisations requested the portrait and (by extension) why others did not\u201d and that organisations would be distracted from operational activity by having to answer them.<\/p>\n One royal historian said it was the latest example of the government acting to protect the reputation of the monarchy and a sign of anxiety in Whitehall about any further undermining of the institution\u2019s reputation.<\/p>\n The refusal comes amid a steady decline in the proportion of the adult population who believe the monarchy is good for Britain, falling from 60% in July 2019 to 51% in March 2024, according to You Gov<\/a>. The combined proportion of people who thought it was either bad or neither good nor bad rose in the same period from 34% to 44%.<\/p>\n