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00:06Fire and rescue.
00:07There's Winter Castle here.
00:08Yeah, we've got a fire in the fire in the chapel at Winter Castle.
00:12Fire in the private chapel.
00:16We're to rendezvous at the Caudreau.
00:18Yeah.
00:25Just after 11 o'clock on the morning of 20th of November,
00:30I had a phone call from BBC Radio Berkshire.
00:32Can you tell us about the fire at Windsor Castle?
00:36First I've heard of it.
00:40What was the scene when you arrived?
00:42It was very dramatic.
00:44There were quite a few fire appliances there, a lot of fire.
00:53Photographers and television crews.
00:56The Brunswick Tower was just like a factory chimney, spouting orange flames.
01:03That's the Brunswick Tower.
01:05What?
01:05Brunswick Tower.
01:07There was a certain amount of disbelief.
01:09I must go back.
01:11There's nobody can imagine something like the castle going up in flames.
01:19That middle of the afternoon, Queen arrived.
01:22She was obviously devastated.
01:24I suppose deep in her mind was, well, how are we going to get it all together again?
01:37Some events take on a symbolism of their own.
01:41This castle, like the monarchy, had stood for a thousand years.
01:46It was the Queen's much-loved home.
01:48A childhood sanctuary during the Second World War.
01:52And suddenly, here it was, a blaze.
01:57But when it was announced that we, the taxpayers, and not the Queen, would pay for the repairs,
02:03it set off a dangerous reaction.
02:0790% of public opinion would say the taxpayers shouldn't foot this bill.
02:12Couldn't give a damn about what's going down in Windsor.
02:14We're talking about the whole country.
02:15And if Lizzie wants her fancy castle back, let her have it back.
02:18But she can pay for it because she can damn well afford it.
02:22For a moment, our focus on the royal family wasn't about scandalous gossip or affairs.
02:28It was about money.
02:30I don't see why now I should have to pay for somebody else's home.
02:33Why should taxpayers have to pay for it?
02:35We are talking about the richest woman in the world.
02:38All that outrage sprang from a misunderstanding because the truth is, Windsor Castle wasn't
02:44owned by the Queen, but by us, the nation.
02:48So it wasn't unreasonable to expect that we should pay for the repairs.
02:54But what had become clear was that the subject of money could become perilous for the royals.
03:02Good morning, everybody.
03:03This is the real centre of today's events.
03:07I seem to have been reporting on the monarchy forever.
03:10The lighting is all cockeyed, isn't it?
03:12Are you pro-monarchy, Mr. Dimbleby?
03:15Well, I'm pro-television series about the monarchy.
03:20And there are important questions I want to ask.
03:24Well, I've never talked about any of this before in my life.
03:26I hope it all led me into very bad ways.
03:29Bloody hell.
03:31At a time when millions are struggling to make ends meet, how is it that the royal family
03:36is making more money than ever?
03:39Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for paying your rent every now and then.
03:45Discovering how rich they really are isn't that easy.
03:49The secrecy is institutional.
03:51It's obsessive.
03:53Of course he lives a life of luxury.
03:55That's the life of a member of the royal family.
03:58Where does their wealth come from?
04:01That is a huge amount of money flowing from the public purse into the private pockets
04:08of the royal family.
04:10Well, I had quite a few conversations with the queen about it.
04:12And did she purr with pleasure when you explained how it worked?
04:16And are they worth it?
04:44The grand procession, which will bring Her Majesty.
04:48The grand procession.
04:56to us on the day of the coronation i was 14 at the time i remember it was a very
05:02wet day walking
05:03through the streets of london but it was a very grand affair brazen display of glorious ceremony
05:16no expense spared the royal family was of course already rich
05:25though not long into the queen's reign they did claim they were feeling the pinch
05:37over the years the queen and her advisors achieved an extraordinary feat
05:50god save the king
05:54by the time of charles's coronation he didn't just inherit the crown i'm deeply aware of this great
06:03inheritance astonishingly he inherited more wealth than any monarch for generations
06:12and on top of that the sovereign grant that funds his public duties is more than it ever was during
06:18the queen's reign to understand why it helps to do something that is slightly indelicate which is to
06:26work out how much the king himself actually is worth what he owns privately and what's ours as a nation
06:37and it's a particularly tall order because if you ask them directly how much is the king worth
06:41you're met with a stony silence
06:47how big a team were you working on it had about 12 of us the actual task involved in answering
06:53a
06:53question how wealthy is the king is vastly more complicated than it is to pose the question
06:59our team spent months trying to establish what we could see what we couldn't see and then we try to
07:05assign values of everything that they own there are a huge number of properties that are associated
07:11with the royal family buckingham palace they don't own that it's what we would call owned and right of
07:17the crown dressed up way of saying it belongs to the united kingdom so they can't sell it no
07:26you've got kensington palace you've got st james's palace you've got clarence house those are all
07:31properties that are owned in right of the crown and do they live rent free the king for the most
07:37part
07:37yes so that you you or i would have to pay rent to live in these places that's very true
07:42but they're
07:43not a normal family what private houses does the king have there's actually only really two
07:52sandringham estate a vast estate which includes residential properties tenant farmers the village
07:59of anmer second big private property castle balmoral that's not just a castle that's huge swathes of
08:07land private property in all how much all in all 330 million pounds we think so what are their jewels
08:14that they're famous for the royal family find something to for the um sapphires diamonds and
08:20yeah tiaras and necklaces they're the most incredible pieces you've ever seen and for the most part
08:27privately owned this is a nice piece of jewelry right if you sold it it would raise a pretty penny
08:32but if you then tell people oh and by the way did you know queen elizabeth owned this and she
08:36wore this
08:36the price goes through the roof of course nobody can calculate what the windsor premium is so we think
08:42like applying a very kind of very very conservative premium of 10 times we think those are worth about
08:49533 million pounds bare minimum what about this what's this great thing stamps it is the most
08:57comprehensive collection of stamps in the world by far bare minimum 100 million pounds
09:03so nothing rivals their collection of jewelry nothing rivals their collection of stamps
09:09livestock livestock bloodstock blood sources livestock horses where did you go on horses
09:15the queen was very very enthusiastic about horses she collected a stable worth about 27 million pounds
09:23art is the hardest one to value there are corridors lined with great masterpieces but again you've got to
09:30distinguish between the publicly owned art and the privately owned art there is no kind of publicly
09:34available listing of the art they privately owned so one of the ways that we assess this was just
09:38to go through the photos they have produced of the residences where they live for example there is a
09:46Monet on the walls in one of the palaces but we think it's privately owned based on what we can
09:51tell
09:52what they privately owned we think about 24 million pounds but that's probably a very significant
09:59underestimate toss it all up and what do you come to altogether that's 1.2 billion 1.2 billion pounds
10:06yeah it's very probably an underestimate because i would imagine the more of it is things that are
10:10harder to see the invisible assets things like shares what was the reaction when you came up with this
10:15figure for all this wealth well they didn't like it very much they said it was a creative mix of
10:21sort of
10:22speculation and assumption and inaccuracy but in that case what's your figure and is when you don't get
10:29answers to reasonable questions you start to wonder why there isn't a simple answer
10:37see the king and the queen leading the charge here stepping out onto the balcony
10:42it's no accident that there isn't a simple answer
10:46over the years the royals have grown their wealth apparently without the public really noticing it
10:53to understand how they managed to do it we need to go back to 1973 a year most people remember
11:03for
11:04different reasons good evening it's really been one of those weeks hasn't it as always everyone's been
11:12blaming everybody else for what's happened it was a winter full of discontent
11:22the country in recession the government imposing a three-day working week petrol and electricity about
11:32to be rationed and to save power we were even told we should clean our teeth in the dark
11:42the only light was the first royal wedding of a generation
11:49but while we were distracted from our troubles by princess anne's fairy tale wedding
11:56the queen had a problem to solve
12:02ted heath's government was working on a new law which would allow british companies
12:08to see the name of any of their shareholders so that investors in companies could no longer keep
12:15their identities secret at a time when many of her subjects were worried about making ends meet
12:25the queen now risked having her growing wealth revealed
12:33but luckily for the queen there's a little known power that the sovereign has that doesn't apply to
12:38anybody else it's called queen's consent or rather now king's consent and it means the monarch can take a
12:47view on any proposed law sent to them which affects their private interest before parliament even gets a chance to
12:56look at it
12:56over the queen's reign at least 160 laws were designed in one way or another to exempt the monarch and
13:05they included things like health and safety regulations
13:08wildlife protection the race relations act equal opportunities with each of these laws she had the power to say it
13:17doesn't apply to me thank you very much
13:22so in the week just before her daughter's wedding the queen sends her emissaries down to white hall
13:28to discuss ted heath's proposed transparency law and these are the memos which were leaked later to the press
13:36about the discussions and they do say that it's potentially embarrassing to the queen embarrassing again
13:45three times embarrassing in their discussion so they were obviously worried about it the reply then comes
13:52back from the department that they have i love this word they have evolved the following solution
14:01the queen and subsequently her immediate family whoever that means would be excluded from ted heath's legislation
14:10the queen those whom god hath joined together let no queen must have been very relieved
14:21i'm glad that my daughter's wedding gave such pleasure to so many people
14:26just at a time when the world was facing very serious problems
14:32the queen now had a purpose-built legal mechanism to hide her and her family's wealth
14:42and it's remained hidden ever since
14:46do you have any right to know what the king's investments are his private investments
14:51i don't know yours you don't know mine that's true but you know i'm not the head of state and
14:56neither are you sadly yes but there's an important point there which is that the king is not a normal
15:02individual like you or i he's the monarch he has great influence over the running of the government
15:07and anyone else in the public role we have you know laws guidebooks codes prime minister has to
15:14disclose all of his properties his shareholdings any other interests that might influence his decision
15:20making might influence how he performs his role none of that applies to the royal family so how do they
15:25justify striking out laws that they don't want to affect i don't really know in all honesty because
15:31we've asked them this and again we can't get a straight answer out of them we put this to the
15:36palace and they said such claims are misleading they went on to say that the publication in question
15:42was given thorough assistance background information and an on the record response
15:48in relation to their many inquiries on the issue of crown exemption
15:58the royal family peculiarly bad explaining almost anything
16:03the mask of have you come far i mean what do you do how delightful slips when people say
16:10how much how much money have you got which bits of this is our money what's yours there is a
16:16feeling of
16:16well this is incredibly ungrateful of people you know it's a terrible life i'm living on your behalf
16:23can't you leave me alone there's a sort of i do think they feel at a certain point um this
16:29is all very
16:30impertinent is their wealth a stumbling block to their popularity definitely i think so they're living in
16:38the height of luxury they have no financial worries they have no worries of any ordinary person
16:46so of course it is a stumbling block
16:56the whole question of money was something that um we always had to be extremely sensitive about
17:01there is an unwritten compact i think between people and monarchy but in return for the royal family
17:09being royal living in palaces having a heads of state to visit there is an understanding that there
17:17should be an attention to detail and excellence that there shouldn't be drop catches but one can't
17:25stand still one has to be sensitive to public mood you use the word drop yeah just wondering what which
17:32catches were dropped i i was thinking of the the fire the response to the fire i think it came
17:37as a
17:38shock to everyone that the government would be paying for the restoration of windsor castle
17:47members of the public have raised the question of who should pay
17:53as the smoke cleared around windsor castle the outcry over the repair bill totaling 36 million pounds
18:02meant that something would have to change how is it that suddenly we can find any amount of money
18:09we're under the same week where you've got cardboard city how to which you're falling apart and people
18:15being dispossessed how can you justify that yeah yeah faced with public anger the queen stumped up
18:21some cash a couple of million pounds just a fraction of the total in addition she opened buckingham palace
18:29to the public for the first time oh for eight pounds a ticket but the effect of the controversy over
18:35windsor was to shine a light on the whole business of royal finances
18:42and then the queen made another surprising announcement
18:47this time about tax historically the monarch would not be taxed because they're the ones who actually
18:55having to spend all the money the monarch had to pay to fight wars the monarch had to you know
19:00pay for
19:00a standing army and so on and so on and so on right from king john and magna carta
19:06of course parliament took over paying for all of that in the end and income tax was introduced to help
19:12foot
19:13the bill when it was it seemed perfectly natural for the monarch to pay up as well
19:23queen victoria for instance paid income tax edward the seventh paid income tax
19:30george v the queen's grandfather paid they all coughed up it made a really important
19:39statement of a monarchy that understood its people and wanted to be shoulder to shoulder with them
19:48but within weeks of taking the throne the queen's father george the sixth managed to persuade the
19:55government that the costs of being king was so high he shouldn't pay tax
20:03and the queen when she came to the throne simply carried on this income tax free arrangement that her
20:10father had made almost as if it was some kind of ancient royal tradition to the point that the
20:17chancellor exchequer in the 50s said well of course the queen doesn't pay tax it's perfectly natural
20:23and so for decades the windsor's wealth grew unchecked
20:30but now with public anger over the winds of fire dominating the headlines the fact that the queen
20:37didn't pay income tax only made things worse i like queen victoria have always been a believer
20:45in that old maxim moderation in all things
20:55just days after the windsor fire the prime minister john major made a surprising announcement
21:03though perished the thought the fire had anything to do with it
21:09her majesty some months ago asked me to consider the basis upon which she might voluntarily pay tax
21:15the prince of wales has made a similar request for the first time since the 1930s a british monarch
21:21is to pay income tax it's estimated that her bill will be around two million pounds a year certainly
21:27it's very hard to resist the conclusion that it is a response to the public clamor
21:30will it be enough to buy off the rising tide of criticism
21:38by then i'd been in the palace for five years it was a time where i think a lot of
21:45questions were
21:46asked about the monarchy the wealth of the institution the whole question of tax
21:53these kinds of events cause you to think about what you're doing it was rather suspicious it was
22:00announced days after the fire well suspicious to the extent that a lot of the work had been done
22:07before the fire but it needed a catalyst to ensure that it was brought into effect
22:16in plain language without the fire it might never have happened
22:23charged with making sure the new arrangements wouldn't hit the royal purse too hard
22:29was one of the best money men in the business the queen's director of finance michael pete
22:38is her majesty pleased that this has happened her majesty is is is is a very pragmatic person she
22:45appreciates that um there was a general feeling that she should pay tax and she was conscious of that michael
22:52pete
22:52was an accountant great grandson of one of the founders of what became uh kpmg the p stands for
22:59pete he helps persuade the queen that it would be good idea to pay tax can you say
23:05by how much her majesty will be worse off not in precise terms what i can say is that
23:11she will very definitely be worse off i mean these are real arrangements and myself and my colleagues on the
23:17financial side are going to have to work hard to enable these new arrangements to be paid for one of
23:23the arguments he puts forward is that there actually wouldn't be much material change for
23:30her they were able to convince the treasury that you know some of that cost including the cost of
23:36running some of her private residences we put against tax as legitimate official expenses
23:43so really the queen was an astute tax avoider absolutely do you think this new arrangement is
23:51fair yes i think it's very fair if i could just add to that it's fair in so far as
23:58tax is fair for any of
23:59us mr pete thank you very much indeed thank you very much the trouble with gestures like suddenly
24:07announcing you're going to pay income tax voluntarily is to make everybody inquisitive about you know
24:15what taxes you do and don't pay i mean it sparks in its own way a controversy do you pay
24:23capital gains
24:23tax you pay inheritance tax we all do inheritance tax no nothing nada absolutely nothing generation to
24:35generation the wealth passes unmolested any other family as it goes through the generations the wealth
24:42is winnowed back not so with sovereign to sovereign bequests there is never a moment at which it gets
24:48sliced down so they just get richer and richer and richer and they're exempt from capital gains tax who
24:54says that's by agreement with the government but the position now is that they voluntarily pay is there any
25:01prospect of their taxation position being reviewed all of these things can be changed if the government
25:08wants it but there's a kind of culture of deference i think it's very difficult to open that discussion
25:14without being perceived as the government of the day to have got some sort of problem with the monarchy
25:19or to be starting a fight with the king
25:23it's the absurdity of situations where there is so much wealth and so much privilege in the sense of
25:33exemptions from taxation why does he need that money and i think it's surprising that those questions
25:42haven't been asked more loudly certainly since the late queen died
25:48it's often felt in recent days that a veil of sorrow has covered the nation
25:57so when the queen died charles made an inheritance tax saving on assets alone
26:03of hundreds of millions of pounds alongside their tax-free inherited wealth the monarch and the heir also
26:19benefit from a huge private income generated by two historic estates which boast special tax exemptions
26:31the duchy of lancaster and the duchy of cornwall and the profits made from the duchy of lancaster go to
26:39the king
26:40and the profits from the duchy of cornwall to the prince of wales that's to say to william
26:46their majesty spent much of their time in informal visits to duchy of many of the tenants on the duchy
26:51estates had the pleasure of talking with their royal landlord these names are a wee bit misleading
26:58because these estates are actually vast lancaster includes tracts of land spread across the whole
27:05north of england while cornwall is even larger with holdings across 23 different counties in england and wales
27:15and both of them have areas of prime real estate in central london
27:25in every film you watch about the duchies the windsors are portrayed as benign landlords
27:33the wonderful thing about the duchy of cornwall has always been
27:37that family association going back all these generations
27:43champions of local economy we still have some farms going back to 1337
27:50and heritage biscuit bakers now you can find duchy originals in all branches of waitrose
27:58but that's never been the whole story thank you ladies and gentlemen for paying your rent every now and
28:09then when charles first became prince of wells it was quite a sleepy rural backwater in a sense
28:16it was all about rural properties and the rents and so on that you get from them in the 1980s
28:21that
28:22started to change the thatcher government introduced legislation so the duchy could invest more freely
28:33in the early 2000s charles persuaded michael pete to cross the mall to clarence house to go and work
28:41for him why it was put to me by someone who knew charles well that he wanted to get more
28:47money out of
28:48the duchy of cornwall where he wanted the duchy to be more efficient
28:58in the years that michael pete was there it changed its attack and it started moving away from rural
29:04properties and residential properties to commercial property and became basically a very successful
29:10commercial property firm but of course not treated like an ordinary company because of the anomalous
29:15tax regime so the income that charles got from the duchy shot up the duchess success didn't go unnoticed
29:26the ever increasing sums paid out to the queen and charles caught the eye of parliament
29:33and the men who handled the royal money were summoned for questioning
29:39today for the first time in history mps were able to question household officials
29:43on the duchy's accounts there's some irritation among prince charles's senior staff at this
29:48latest attempt to call his financial arrangements into question this afternoon the public accounts
29:54committee is looking at the accounts of the duchies of cornwall and lancaster
30:00the committee tried to figure out why the duchies shouldn't play by the same rules as everyone else
30:08it's not taxed in the same way the plc would be taxed with corporation tax is it the duchy of
30:13cornwall
30:15like the duchy of lancaster is exempt from the taxes do you want to give us an explanation for that
30:22um
30:25well i mean these are these are matters of policy really at the end of the year the profit that
30:32all
30:32goes to the prince of wells that's exactly the purpose that we exist how much is that last year
30:39it was 11.9 million pounds can we have a report on the um the list of properties i don't
30:44see why no no
30:45i know you don't see it but i'm asking you can we have it i don't i don't think it
30:49would serve any
30:49better you don't know that you don't think that but i do and i'm asking you a yes or no
30:54will you make
30:55available a list of the properties i mean are you refusing i'm not saying no but i still need to
31:00be persuaded there's a good reason if you're not saying no you're saying yes then this is a simple
31:04yes no question i'm leaving the question unanswered because i can't answer the purpose okay these mps
31:12grandstanded they huffed and puffed but they didn't land a glove on them
31:20charles gets a lot richer because the dutch is producing more profit yeah absolutely
31:28in the years since the duchess portfolio has continued to grow office blocks service stations
31:37shipping terminals even two small towns all filling the royal purse it's only when you come here that
31:46you can really start to describe what the principles are prince charles managed to scrape by on 16 million
31:53273 000 last year an increase of a million and he managed to pull off the feet of increasing his
31:59income but decreasing the tax he pays
32:06he loves them to spend it everyone knows that he he's got a taste for luxury so partly it goes
32:13on his
32:14lifestyle but also he loves to do things he wants to he wants to change the world so he had
32:19an enormous
32:20staff people running his charities and so on we want to be able to make a difference on the ground
32:25how do
32:26we do it whatever charles's charitable instincts
32:33journalists recently uncovered confidential details that revealed sometimes charity comes at a price
32:44a really interesting story this is the duchy files an investigation by the sunday times and channel 4
32:49dispatches revealing full details of the vast ancient estates owned by the king and the prince i think the
32:56word here is revelation isn't it the duchies generate profits by charging the army the navy hospitals the prison
33:06service schools and councils for the right to use lands rivers and seashores seized for the duchies
33:14in medieval times a spokesperson said it is a private estate with a commercial imperative
33:21the duchies imposed levies for the right even to dig graves it was exposed there is all these other
33:27ways in which taxpayer money gets funneled towards these people the king gets 11 million pounds over
33:3715 years so that the nhs can rent a warehouse that it uses to store ambulances prince william gets 1
33:46.5
33:46million pounds every year from dartmoor prison because it's on duchy land that is a huge amount of money
33:54flowing from the public purse into the private pockets of the royal family 11 million pounds
34:02could do all sorts of things for the public good instead it's making a king even richer than he already
34:09is
34:10there was perhaps a whiff of hypocrisy about this not just because it was making the king richer but
34:17because the royal family often demonstrates their support for the nhs
34:26let's go to the calls it's a usual robbery for the british citizens
34:30kathy from lancashire what do you think about this whole rent row in the royal family at the end of
34:36the
34:36day he doesn't need the money the mother get the mother wants we don't want a monarchy that runs
34:42everything as though it's a commercial enterprise for profit
34:48how would you have handled the row about the duchess charging the nhs or charging for the army to
34:56use dartmoor to exercise on i think it's very um important to understand what the duchy of cornwall
35:03is it's a private estate and charles as duke of cornwall and now william is duke of cornwall ran it
35:10successfully as a business if we're trying to say because they're owned by a member of the royal family
35:17they should give their land away for free that sounds very naive to me
35:22the palace did seem to be embarrassed because they announced they would review some of the arrangements
35:29though they did say their management act required market-based arms-length relationships with all
35:36public bodies
35:43we've come a long way from the days of the early 1950s today the two duchess taken together
35:50provide the windsors with a private income every year of 50 million pounds
35:59is he aware and maybe embarrassed by the luxury of his life
36:08no i don't think he's embarrassed by it and i think he knows how lucky i mean i'm absolutely
36:14sure he knows how lucky he is and he does have a very very strong sense of duty
36:22but the windsors inheritance doesn't just come from land seized and exploited here in britain
36:30it springs from our history as a great imperial power this is it's a the history of course is very
36:39fascinating that it belonged to so many of the kings of persia and the queen talks with obvious warmth
36:47about this jewel queen victoria was was sent it from india as well fascinating i think so it'd be nice
36:54if one could go on wearing it i think
36:56you wouldn't know it from this film but it's just one of many trophies that come from britain's long history
37:02of colonial conquest
37:04one of the smallest countries on the map is responsible for the mightiest commonwealth of nations in history
37:09for 400 years since the first queen elizabeth our monarchs acquired huge amounts of wealth
37:16from the empire those early pioneers have left us a great inheritance of which we may be justly proud
37:22for might and rights go hand in hand they've dealt in precious metals in opium in textiles
37:28in tea and tobacco in sugar and spice and in human beings the fact is that a certain amount of
37:40the
37:40royal family's wealth came from the transportation kidnapping rape murder of africans that was transatlantic
37:50slavery british society as a whole benefited from slavery absolutely just the king i think everyone
37:57benefited from it but i think increasingly historians are proving that the royal family pioneered the
38:02slave trade i mean the royal african company set up by charles ii and his brother james ran the monopoly
38:09of british slave trading at that time so the crown had a monopoly on the slave trade yes yeah many
38:16royals
38:17fought abolition and argued for the pro-slavery lobby so it actually was a family business for the royal
38:25family you could absolutely describe the royal african company as a family business and when its enslaved
38:31cargo arrives in places like barbados they have the initials of the duke of york the brother of charles
38:38ii branded into their flesh
38:44like so much to do with royal finances the details of the monarch's involvement in slavery are very rarely
38:51discussed the queen never publicly mentioned the slave trade or the royal connection to it
39:00she did however attend a service to commemorate the 200th anniversary of its abolition
39:09the congregation in westminster abbey included representatives of all countries who had been
39:15victim of the slave trade i was invited as a member of the press to report on it to record
39:24this ritual
39:25there's about 2 000 people
39:29a lot of politicians the prime minister world family
39:35a glorious day a glorious day for what's a commemoration but also let's remember a celebration
39:42as a member of my community i wanted them to say look as institutions that were involved
39:48and profited from this and still reap the benefits we're sorry we shouldn't have done that but it's
39:55very patronizing the drums the whores i think this is going to be a unique service in many ways not
40:01just
40:02because of who's here descendants of slaves of abolitionists perhaps even who knows of traders themselves
40:09the queen the queen walked past me i was kind of reading through the program about all the things we
40:16had to do the actions they didn't have the solemnity it literally was a celebration welcome in the name of
40:22christ who sets all free and there was a point where i was supposed to to kneel down and and
40:30pray to god
40:30and say sorry for slavery and and it's horrific
40:40all the hymns are happening and i'm looking around and i'm like oh my gosh and and it's coming to
40:45this
40:45point and it's like a time bomb for me today it is for us to face our history and i'm
40:53like i can't do this
40:56let us therefore confess our sins i got up in penitence and faith to our gracious father i had my
41:05hands up what i said is not in my name and forgives
41:16quite a bold thing to do it's a human thing to do institutions the wealth the assets are
41:25not proceeds of those horrendous crimes did you speak to the queen did you address it there was
41:36no response she wasn't giving me eye contact the protester being walked out it is an emotional
41:45subject there's no question about it i think it's back to the service now
41:57other sins of the father visited on the son the individuals living in the 21st century are not
42:05responsible for what the royal family did in the in the 1600s but as an institution they could talk about
42:13it many institutions with ties to slavery universities museums even the church have responded in some way
42:23and charles and later william have expressed regret about slavery in general terms i strongly agree with
42:31my father who said in the appalling atrocity of slavery forever stains our history
42:38i want to express my profound sorrow slavery was abhorrent and it should never have happened
42:48as king charles has said he's deepening his understanding of it but no one in the family
42:54has gone into any detail about the direct role the monarchy played or the fortune they made
43:03i think the biggest problem is that royal family don't acknowledge their own history they should embrace
43:10the complexity of their imperial history you know we are a country that is defined by the history of
43:18the british empire it's the biggest thing we ever did as a country and yet the royal family don't talk
43:24about it rather than being a history that divides us they could talk about it in a way that unites
43:31us
43:37uniting the country is of course the monarch's job description the bread and butter of being king
43:46and it means a never-ending series of royal engagements today he's in bradford
43:54where news of his arrival draws excited crowds she wants to marry george wouldn't you no no she wants
44:03to marry george i never said that mom there's an idea marry george you'd be queen yeah
44:11there's an idea
44:19as you'd expect the royals don't have to pay for days like today out of their own pockets a system
44:27called the sovereign grant pays all their official expenses which covers almost everything we see them
44:34do from walkabouts to garden parties to state banquets the system where we give money to the royal family each
44:47year goes back 200 years to george the third he struck a deal with parliament he handed over the revenues
44:56from vast swathes of royal land to the government it was called the crown estate and in return for the
45:04crown estate the government offered george an annual allowance statement the prime minister
45:12the amount of that allowance has become the subject of lively debate in parliament the government
45:19proposes that the annual payment should remain at 7.9 million the sums paid far exceed the services rendered
45:27the arguments went on here about whether the royal family was value for money when i see the coronation
45:33coach i want to see it gilded with the finest gold that can be bought there's no attack in the
45:38crown
45:39here this is how the money is used an overwhelming number of people in this nation regard the royal
45:45family as the greatest asset the united kingdom has this is a pretty big winter heating allowance
45:53it's all good parliamentary knockabout but the royal family didn't much enjoy having their accounts
45:59poured over in 2011 everything changed for them
46:10the country was once again in the economic doldrums a new government had come to power
46:15and there was an eager new chancellor of the exchequer trying to slash public expenditure
46:22morning mr osborne george osborne today is the day when britain steps back from the brink when the
46:31figures for cups are stark 81 billion pounds cut from public spending almost half a million jobs to vanish
46:39the deepest cuts to public spending in the in living memory a stronger britain starts here and i commend
46:47the palace had been badgering the government for a change in the system because the palace wanted
46:52more control of their finances that was the palace's idea yeah the palace thought they should get a
46:59proportion of the profits of the crown estate now the crown estate this vast property empire but the
47:05government gets all the money so george osborne buys into this okay we'll we'll attach it to the crown
47:12estate for no particularly good reason other than it sounds royal it sounds good
47:21the way of funding the monarchy has been running for 200 years why did you want to change it
47:27my predecessor alistair darling said to me look george i've had to deal with a lot the one problem i
47:33haven't solved is the funding of the royal family and that's over to you and that's when we created a
47:39new system the sovereign grant there's a formula that is decided by the prime minister the chancellor
47:47and a representative of the royal family that essentially sets how much the royal family gets
47:53as a percentage of the money that the crown estates generate now the crown estates these
47:59days are just a kind of modern property company not a bad barometer of how the british economy is doing
48:05so oh really you you did this at a time when you were imposing austerity on everybody in this
48:11country and were much hated for it and yet at the same time you attach the amount of money the
48:17royal
48:18family gets to a huge property company with investments in london and other parts which
48:23which inevitably is going to get richer and richer i don't think that's fair if the money starts to get
48:29too much then the system kicks in and the percentage of the crown estate is adjusted down so when i
48:37set
48:37the sovereign grant up you know the royal family was due to receive 15 that's been adjusted up to 25
48:45to take into account the rebuilding of buckingham palace and then it's now been cut to 12 so the
48:51you know the formula a bit like the royal family the formula is flexible and adjusts and
48:55but the mechanism the sovereign grant endures at first glance that seems fair enough
49:03a budget that can rise or fall but not quite at the heart of it is this fantastic mechanism
49:11from the royal family's point of view if the profits of the crown estate go up the sovereign
49:17grant will go up but if the profits of the crown estate go down the sovereign grant won't go down
49:22it
49:22won't go down it's a ratchet you could only ever go up so the palace is on it was on
49:28a win-win
49:30the actual cash they get under the system you set up can never go down so if they have a
49:36bonanza year
49:38their income rises and it never drops again the higher it goes the higher it stays even if the
49:45economy tanks even if the crown estate that funds it all tanks that was one of the rules that was
49:52one
49:52of the rules you made wasn't it they should never suffer a fall in income unlike everybody else in the
49:57country well they never suffer a fall in cash that's what people call income yeah but inflation
50:06um means that that can be a real fall how can that be fair it's better than having an annual
50:12decision by parliament how much to give to the royal family did the did the palace think it was a
50:17good
50:18wheeze well i had quite a few conversations with the queen about it she'd take not surprisingly it took
50:22her personal interest and did she purr with pleasure when you explained how it worked no i think at the
50:28time
50:28it was seen as quite a tough settlement didn't turn out that way in reality since it was introduced the
50:36percentage may have fallen but the actual money paid out has just gone up and up soaring above the rate
50:45of inflation from around 30 million pounds in 2012 to 72 million pounds this year
50:55and if nothing changes it'll only go ever upwards
51:03wouldn't you have done better to have had a system where you say this is what the royal family needs
51:08in 2012 and we'll make sure it stays level with inflation particularly at a time when millions of
51:16people in the when the millions of people in the country are getting poorer and can't make ends meet
51:21no i i don't agree with you that the system has sort of overly rewarded the royal family you know
51:27it's grand but it's not overly lavish frankly the money that the public spends on the royal family
51:36is tiny by comparison to the things we spend on benefits or the nhs or the defense budget you know
51:43the nhs budget is you know well north of 150 billion pounds but a million a week is not to
51:50be sneezed at
51:52no but first of all it's not money for their own personal expenditure second it's gone to you know
51:58perform the functions we expect of the head of state and the palaces where great events of our nation
52:04happen i think you get pretty good value for money as a country you want some of the grandeur some
52:10of the
52:11your so that when we throw a state banquet for the visiting american president there's a little
52:17shiver down the spine of the president as we show britain at its best mr president mrs trump it is
52:25with
52:25great pleasure that my wife and i welcome you to windsor castle melania and i are deeply grateful
52:35grateful to you and queen camilla and if we didn't have them as the head of state we'd have to
52:40have
52:40someone else and you know let's imagine we had president david dimbleby i can tell you he'd want
52:47nice lavish state dinner and he want a big house and he want helicopters that climbs around the place
52:52and all that he'd be possibly even grander than the windsors
53:02hi there
53:05how are you
53:13but there's another argument that's frequently made for the value of monarchy
53:19you can see it on display four times a week outside buckingham palace
53:25the sheer fact that we have a royal family actually brings an awful lot of money into britain
53:31tourists come from all over the world to see our thousand-year history on show
53:41is it an argument for monarchy that it is a net contributor to britain's gdp it's valid and i
53:49think it's also at a very banal level i think it's economically correct britain does extraordinarily
53:54well as a tourist destination and some part of that is probably attributable to that whole idea of
54:01royal pageantry and and bling but is it a good defense of monarchy to say it brings
54:06in tourism i'm just being honest okay if you gave me as an advertising person that amount
54:12of wealth and resource i could probably find lots of other ways to attract people to the uk
54:16you think if you had the funds the monarchy has you could spend them better by improving london's
54:21nightlife it's conceivable that disney could do a better job than the windsors uh in that okay
54:28the disney corporation manages to get millions and millions of people every year to visit orlando
54:33in august which is effectively a baking hot place in the middle of a swamp so there are other ways
54:40you
54:40can attract tourists a half a billion pound aquarium would probably be pretty impressive
54:45but i don't think every decision in life should be reduced to an economic calculus um and i think the
54:53royal family is important it provides a pretty potent symbol what you might call an arbitrary but
55:00shared focus for our allegiance in many ways that's what we value them for
55:09whether you value the windsor's role or you don't it's a service that doesn't come cheap
55:15the family firm's financial worries have long been put to rest
55:23and charles was the first billionaire to take the throne
55:33our royals have a lifestyle to match the richest plutocrat and their wealth is only set to grow
55:42as my grandmother said when she was crowned coronations are a declaration of our hopes for the future
55:50so what of the future i commit myself to serve you all king country and comwealth god save the king
56:06at the moment william seems to be a bit secretive about his wealth unlike his father
56:12he's refusing to publish his tax returns despite this he and catherine remain hugely popular
56:24the argument for all the financial advantages we give the royal family is that it's a price worth paying
56:30for the life of dutiful public service lived on our behalf
56:37but their position their wealth and all the perks that come with it depend on whether they continue to
56:44win approval from us the public couldn't the monarchy operate from a two-bedroom flat in wembley
56:53the monarchy could operate very well from a two-bedroom flat in wembley but no one would be very
56:58interested in them anymore it's our interest in them that keeps the institution alive their public image
57:08is a royal obsession
57:18but in the image business when things go wrong they can go really wrong if you're born into this position
57:27you have a duty to behave but what lengths will they go to to survive
57:40so
58:10THE END
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