QUEEN OFFERS PRIVY PURSE

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32612, 21 May 1971, Page 9

QUEEN OFFERS PRIVY PURSE

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright)

LONDON, May 20.

A select committee of 17 members of Parliament will study the Queen’s request for an increased allowance for the Monarch and members of the Royal Household.

In making her request—delivered traditionally by way of Gracious Message to Parliament—the Queen has offered to forgo her own

£60,000 a year personal allowance, known as the Privy Purse, to increase the allowances for other people in the Civil List, such as the Duke of Edinburgh, the Queen Mother, and the Duke of Gloucester, the Queen’s uncle.

The committee, which includes the Leader of the Opposition (Mr Harold Wilson) and the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr Anthony Barber) will consider in detail Civil List, in which is declared the amount of money paid to the Queen by the State to allow her to run her household and to do her public duties.

The committee’s report should enable the Houses of Parliament to approve a new Civil List by the end of July. The present amount was last fixed in 1952, at £475,000. It is estimated that this figure would have to be increased to about £900,000 if rising costs since 1952 were taken into account.

In her message, the Queen told Parliament: “Her Majesty regrets that developments in the intervening years have made the present provision inadequate for the maintenance of that standard of service to her people to which she believes they wish her and her family to adhere.”