CIVIL LIST. (Hansard, 9 May 1901)

§ *THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Sir M. HICKS BEACH, Bristol, W.)

said: In one respect I hope there will be an agreeable difference between the discussion of the subject to which it is my duty to call the attention of the Committee to-night and that of the proposals which I have recently had to place before the House of Commons in connection with the Budget. During the long and great reign of our late Queen, perhaps there are few things more remarkable than the manner in which 1201 the Crown, thanks largely to her great constitutional wisdom and her noble character, increased in popularity throughout her dominions. I think it is not too much to say that at no time was the Crown more popular as an institution in this country than at the present, and perhaps it is the most popular of all our great institutions. But there is more than this. Throughout the Empire there has grown up a feeling, and a very right and proper feeling, of the enormous importance of the Crown as the main link of all those nations and peoples of which the British Empire is composed; and therefore I think it occurred that in the brief debate in which this subject was dealt with at the commencement of the present session there was no sign of any difference of opinion as to the necessity of making sufficient and adequate provision for the maintenance of the honour and dignity of the Crown. Sir, the same spirit was exhibited in the proceedings of the late Committee. The hon. Member for Northampton, with his invariable consistency to his past, no doubt felt it his duty to differ from the Report which I had the honour to propose, and, of course, there were differences of detail between the Members of that Committee, as could not but be the case in a Committee representing, as I will venture to say, every shade of opinion within this House—[Nationalist cries of "No."]—hon. Members will perhaps allow me to finish my sentence—except the opinions of the party led by the hon. Member for Waterford. Therefore, I shall not attempt to detain the Committee to-night with any argument upon the principle of a new Civil List. I take it that that is practically admitted, and that this House, in accepting the surrender by his Majesty of the hereditary revenues of the Crown, accepted also the liability to provide an adequate Civil List for the maintenance of the Crown, and whatever else may be necessary for the maintenance of the Royal Family; and I shall merely explain the proposals of His Majesty's Government with regard to that important subject.

When in March last I proposed the appointment of a Select Committee I deferred any explanation of those proposals until it could be made to that 1202 Committee. It seemed to me that such action was most in accordance with the ordinary procedure of Parliament, and was best adapted to secure an adequate consideration and a proper decision upon the important subjects that were at issue. The Committee considered our proposals, and the result of that consideration is embodied in the Report which is now in the hands of hon. Members; and although I would not for a moment attempt to shift upon the Select Committee any responsibility in this matter which properly belongs to the Government, yet I may venture to say that it is no small advantage that our proposals in this respect should have been practically accepted, almost with unanimity, by so important a tribunal, and that with those proposals there should be placed before the House all the information, considered adequate for the purpose by that Select Committee, on which those proposals were based, and by which, of course, they are defended. It is far better, it seems to me, that the matter should be presented to the House of Commons in this way, because it is far more easy for hon. Members, having the whole matter before them in print, to arrive at a proper decision than if they had merely heard a statement in regard to it by a Minister of the Crown.

I hope that the great majority of this House will consider our proposals in this matter sufficient and moderate. Some may say, perhaps, that they are too small; others may say, perhaps, that they are too large. [Mr. LABOUCHERE: Hear, hear; and laughter.] But I would reply, first, that I cannot think it would be to the advantage of the Crown to vote so large a Civil List, that there would be a temptation to the Sovereign on the one hand either to lavish and unnecessary expenditure, or on the other to the accumulation of savings after the duties of the Crown had been adequately performed. And to anyone who may suggest, as I have no doubt the hon. Member for Northampton will suggest, that our proposals are too large, I would reply that I do not think anything more unjust to the Sovereign or injurious to the country can easily be conceived than that the Civil List should be cut down to such proportions that it would not be adequate to 1203 maintain the proper dignity and honour of the Crown in the way in which the nation would desire it to be maintained, and that the Sovereign should be compelled to resort to Parliament for payment of debts incurred on account of the too small dimensions of the Civil List. We have based our proposals on existing lines. We have adhered to those lines as far as we thought it possible and right; where we have departed from them, and the reasons for which we have so departed, is explained in the Report of the Select Committee. The Civil List of the late Queen was £385,000 a year. I would in passing state to the Committee that in that sum was not included what are called the Civil List pensions, the pensions not exceeding in all £1,200 in any year which are annually granted on the recommendation of the First Lord of the Treasury to persons, or the near relations of persons, who may unhappily be in indigent circumstances and who have done public service to the State in some form or other, mainly, I think, by literary or scientific work. Those pensions are purely a nominal part of the Civil List; they amount, in all, at the present time, to £24,000 a year, and they will in future be charged on the Consolidated Fund, to which, and not to the Civil List, they properly belong. I exclude them on both sides from the comparisons which I am about to make.

By the Civil List Act passed at the commencement of the reign of Her late Majesty, the Civil List was divided into five classes. First, was the Privy Purse; second, the salaries of all the officials and servants of the Court, from the Great Officers of State, the Lord Chamberlain, the Lord Steward, and the Master of the Horse, down to the domestic servants; third, the expenses for the maintenance of the household, including the maintenance of the garden and farm at Windsor Castle, Buckingham Palace, the expenses of travelling, and practically all other expenses except salaries and wages; fourth, the Royal Bounty, alms, and special services of that kind; and fifth, an unappropriated balance of £8,000 a year, making in all £385,000 a year. We propose to add another class to the new Civil List, the reason for which I will presently explain.

I will now compare class by class 1204 our proposals. It will be found in the Report of the Select Committee, among the amounts which were allocated to each class by the Civil List Act of Queen Victoria, that £60,000 was devoted to the Privy Purse of the Sovereign. In the new Civil List we have to consider, happily, that there is a Queen Consort as well; and we propose that the Privy Purse of their Majesties shall be £110,000 a year, the same amount as was provided by Parliament for the Privy Purse of King William IV. and Queen Adelaide. Parliament has never inquired, and I feel quite sure that the present House of Commons will not desire to inquire, into the expenditure of the Privy Purse of the Sovereign, but I should like to say one thing in regard to that matter. It may be supposed by some ignorant persons—not, I am sure, by any Member of the House—that there is no obligation upon the Sovereign with respect to the expenditure of the Privy Purse; that practically it is a sort of pocket-money which can be devoted by the Sovereign to any purpose he may desire. That is not by any means the fact. It is to meet, in the first instance, all those almost innumerable requests—increasing, I venture to say, year after year, and coming probably from every part of the Empire, and sometimes, I dare say, from foreign countries—for contributions, by way of subscription or donation, to charitable and other public purposes of every kind, to which, I am sure, a Sovereign of the generous heart of His present Majesty would be always desirous liberally to respond. But beyond that, which is in itself no slight burden upon the Sovereign, there is an expenditure which the Sovereign of England has always incurred for private residences apart from the public palaces like Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace. Our present Sovereign not only has a private residence at Sandringham, at which he has lived for, I believe, something like forty years, but the late Queen has bequeathed to him, as Sovereign of this country, Balmoral and Osborne, which are associated in the minds of the people of this country with many charming and never-to-be-forgotten memories of Her late Majesty's great and noble life. Those residences are necessarily expensive to maintain. They must be main 1205 tained out of the Privy Purse and out of the revenues of the Duchy of Lancaster, which, as the Committee are aware, is a kind of private appanage of the Crown, belonging to it for many past generations; and I do not mention these things in order to suggest to the Committee that on account of the cost of these private residences there should be an addition to the Civil List. But, surely, of all persons in the country the Sovereign is most entitled to occasional private recreation, apart from his public duties, in which he may enjoy that rest and partake in those rural pursuits which are now recognised as necessary to refresh the mind and body of every person in this country who is actively engaged in the performance of important work; and therefore I mention them as showing that there is an expenditure incumbent upon the Sovereign of this country out of the Privy Purse which cannot be avoided, and which must necessarily involve considerable cost.

I now come to the second class of the Civil List—the class for the salaries of the officers of State, the annual payments to persons belonging to the Court, and for servants' wages. In the time of Her late Majesty that class was fixed by Parliament at £131,260 a year. We now propose that it shall be fixed at £125,800 a year. That estimate has been based upon proposals for the abolition of unnecessary offices and for the reduction of salaries as vacancies occur, as the result of an inquiry instituted by command of His Majesty by the three great officers of State—the Lord Steward, the Lord Chamberlain, and the Master of the Horse—into their several departments. I need not go into the details of those proposals, as they will be found in the appendix to the Report of the Committee, but perhaps I may state to the Committee some of the principal of them. It is proposed that on the next vacancies the salaries of the Treasurer of the Household, the Comptroller of the Household, and the Vice-Chamberlain shall be reduced from £900 to £700 a year; that instead of seven Parliamentary lords-in-waiting at £700 a year each, there shall be five at £600 a year each; that the salary of the captain of the Gentlemen-at Arms and of the captain of the Yeomen of the Guard shall be 1206 reduced from £1,200 a year each to £1,000 a year each; that the salary of the Master of the Horse shall be reduced from £2,500 to £2,000, the same amount as is paid to the Lord Steward and the Lord Chamberlain; and, lastly, it is provided that the Mastership of the Buckhounds shall be abolished. We proposed to the Committee that the Royal Buckhounds should cease to exist, but that in their place Royal Foxhounds should be established. But when that proposal came to be discussed various difficulties were found to arise, and the opinion of the Committee was very distinctly in favour of the abolition of the Mastership of the Buckhounds and of the Royal Hounds generally. The Committee report as follows on that question— Your Committee do not think it advisable that the Mastership of the Buckhounds should be continued, nor do they think it necessary that the Royal Hunt should be maintained. They feel that it is for the Sovereign to decide whether and in what form encouragement should be given by his Majesty to any particular national sport; and they do not consider it desirable to impose on his Majesty an obligation to do so by devoting a portion of the Civil List specially to that object. The Committee therefore struck out of Class 2 the sum of £2,200 in respect of the salaries of the Master of the Buckhounds and the servants of the Hunt, and out of Class 3 the sum of £4,000 for the expenses of the Hunt. His Majesty, on our advice, agreed to accept this recommendation; and, therefore, the Mastership of the Buckhounds will cease to exist as soon as an arrangement has been made for terminating the Royal Hunt. I may explain that a new item has been included in Class 2 of £10,500 for the personal staff of the King, including private secretaries, the Keeper of the Privy Purse, and various assistant clerks. Any one, I think, who has any notion of the amount of business that in our day has to be transacted by the Sovereign, and the manner in which it is transacted, will be ready to agree that provision for offices of this kind is as vitally necessary as is any provision which is made in the Civil List. The class, on the other hand, will be reduced by taking out of it a sum of £12,000 a year for non-effective services—in other words, for pensions granted by her late Majesty to those who had been in her 1207 service for many years, and many of whom are now very advanced in age. We felt that it would be unfair to burden the Civil List of the present King with those charges, and that sum will in future be imposed upon the Consolidated Fund. We propose, also, that in addition to that £13,000 should be charged upon the Consolidated Fund for pensions for servants of the late Queen, who at the commencement of a new reign clearly ought to be retired for one reason or another, and could not properly form part of the establishment of the new Sovereign. Many of these servants, again, are advanced in age; the pensions granted are on account of services of Considerable length; and as these pensions fall in the benefit will accrue to the Exchequer.

I now come to Class 3, in which is included, as I have already explained to the Committee, all the provision for the maintenance of the Royal Household, for travelling, and practically everything but the salaries and wages of the officers and servants belonging to it. This is a class which the Committee very carefully considered. The sum allotted to it in the Civil List of Queen Victoria was £172,500, but if Members turn to the accounts of expenditure attached to the Committee's Report they will find that in only one year for the last thirteen years—namely, in 1888—did the sum allocated to this class in the Civil List suffice for the expenditure. A total sum of no less than £170,250 had to be devoted to the expenditure in this class from the Privy Purse of the Sovereign, in order to meet the necessary requirements of the class. As hon. Members are aware, during a very considerable part of her reign her late Majesty was suffering under the great grief of her life, and, in entire concurrence with the sympathies of her people, she lived in comparative seclusion, although never for a moment did she cease from doing her necessary work as Queen. Therefore, the expenses of the Court during that time were, of course, curtailed, and savings were made which enabled the Privy Purse, which had, in accordance with the law, obtained the benefit of those savings, to bear this excess expenditure in Class 3. But there 1208 is not the least possibility of this now. The present King has no personal fortune. Whatever remains from the private fortune of the late Queen or from the savings to which I have referred was, in accordance with the statement made by her Majesty's Ministers to the Committee on the Prince of Wales's Children Act of 1889, devoted by her Majesty to the benefit of her younger children. Therefore, it is a fact which cannot, I think, be too widely known that the present King has no personal fortune, and is dependent upon the revenues of the Duchy of Lancaster and upon the Civil List which may be voted by Parliament. Therefore it is absolutely clear that we must in this. Class 3, which relates to the necessary expenditure of the Royal Household, make sufficient provision for that expenditure.

The Committee went very carefully into that matter. They felt that the only guide to the proper provision to be made—and in that I think the hon. Member for Northampton entirely agreed—was the expenditure of past years; and they took as a guide the expenditure of recent years, because it is perfectly evident that the expenditure of recent years is a fairer guide than the expenditure of fifty years ago. I do not mean that there are not many items in the charge for the maintenance of the Royal Household in which the expenditure may have decreased as compared with what it was fifty years ago. The prices of many articles of food may be less now than they were then; but I will venture to say that, taking all articles together, the expenditure on such an establishment an the Royal Household must necessarily even in that matter be larger than it was in 1837. And beyond that the charges for labour have increased; tradesmen's bills are, therefore, necessarily higher; there is more travelling, and the cost of travelling, when the travelling of the Royal Family is concerned, is more expensive than it was; there are more visitors to be entertained at Court from foreign countries, from our colonies, and from this country itself, and therefore more horses and carriages to be kept—there are many items of that kind which are necessarily 1209 larger than they were in the early days of the late Queen's reign. And, further, throughout all the country, happily for everyone, the standard of comfort has been largely raised, the standard of entertainment has enormously increased; and it is right and proper that the Crown should be put in such a position that the King's comfort should not be interfered with and that he should be able to exercise that hospitality which the country would desire. Therefore the Committee, after carefully going through this class, and after relieving it of certain payments, such as that for the Royal Hunt, the Mistress of the Robes, the expense of which office will fall on the Privy Purse, of £3,350 for Queen's premiums, which with some other small matters will fall on the Votes, and of £10,000 a year for the internal repairs and decorations at Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace, which will be placed in another class of the Civil List—the Committee thought that it was necessary, for the reasons I have stated, that the class as a whole should be increased to £193,000 a year. I may state before I pass from it that His Majesty has directed that a thorough investigation shall be made into the system of household management and everything connected with the Royal Household expenditure, in order that any possible abuses or waste which may have sprung up through so long a reign may be promptly and properly corrected.

I come now to Class 4. It is a new one. It amounts to £20,000 a year, and it is partly composed of £10,000 a year, of which Class 3 has been relieved, for the work which may be required from year to year for decorations or internal repairs and alterations at Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace, and to that we propose to add another £10,000 of which the Votes in Parliament will be relieved, for this work. There has been a very curious system hitherto under which works of this kind have been performed. They have partly been performed by the direction of the Lord Chamberlain or the Lord Steward, and charged in the Civil List, and partly by the direction of the Office of Works out of Votes in Parliament. That kind of divided control does not conduce either to economy or efficiency. Therefore we 1210 proposed to the Committee, and the Committee accepted our recommendation, that in future the Parliamentary Votes should be relieved of the £10,000 a year which is now placed upon them for these purposes, and that all internal work in these two palaces of the Crown, shall in future be done under the orders of the Sovereign by the Office of Works, the expenditure to be charged on the Civil List. Therefore, on the one side, the great officers of State will be directly interested more than they have been in the past in controlling the demands of their subordinates, and, secondly, the Office of Works will be able to perform these works more economically on account of its greater knowledge of contracts and its better means of checking expenditure in every way.

Then I come to the fifth class—£13,200 a year—which is the same as in the similar class in the Civil List of Queen Victoria, for the Royal bounty and Royal alms, partly administered on the recommendation of the First Lord of the Treasury and partly on the recommendation of the Lord High Almoner. Finally, there is £8,000 a year, as practically there was in the last Civil List, unappropriated, and therefore available to make up any deficit in any one of the classes. The total amount of the Civil List to the King which we propose is therefore £470,000 a year.

Now I come to the provision to be made for those members of the Royal Family whose positions were affected by the death of the late Queen. Hon. Members are aware that by the Prince of Wales's Children Act, 1889, a sum of £36,000 a year was provided to be handed over to trustees and to be administered under the direction of his present Majesty for the benefit of his children. That provision ceases on 22nd July next, in accordance with the Act; and, therefore, it is necessary now for us to make further provision for these members of the Royal Family, which I think the Committee will feel ought to be in accordance with the higher position to which they have now succeeded. We propose that an annuity of £20,000 a year should be provided for His Royal Highness the Duke of Cornwall, who will, of course, also receive the revenues of the Duchy of Cornwall, which have been considerably 1211 augmented since his present Majesty succeeded to the Duchy, owing, I am bound to say, to the admirable way in which the estates of that Duchy have been administered, largely under his present Majesty's own superintendence.

I cannot help, if the Committee will allow me in this connection, alluding to one point which I think is of real public interest. The estates of the Duchy of Cornwall comprise property situated in one of the poorest parts of South London. That property was let early in the last century on very long leases, so that practically only in recent years has any control of it been possible by those entrusted with the administration of the affairs of the Duchy. As these leases have fallen in what has been done? They have not been succeeded by new building leases. Those who have been responsible for the affairs of the Duchy, on the initiative of His Majesty himself, have taken this matter into their own hands, have built houses, and have let them direct to tenants, just as in the country the connection between landlord and tenant is direct. That has resulted, not merely to the great advantage of the revenues of the Duchy—that was not the primary consideration—but what is of more importance, it has established a direct connection between the owner of the ground and the dweller in the house, the general absence of which, I venture to say, has had not a little to do with the difficulty of housing the poor in large cities like London. I cannot help mentioning this, because I know what great interest His Majesty takes in the subject himself, and I venture to say he has set a noble example to all ground landlords. I should state to the Committee that in the annuity which we propose for the Duke of Cornwall and in the Civil List no provision is included for the children of his Royal Highness if and when those children shall come to an age at which they may require separate establishments. We thought, and the Select Committee agreed with us, that, having regard to the youth of the children of His Royal Highness, any such provision would, to say the least, be premature. Besides this, I should say that we propose an annuity of £10,000 a year to Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Cornwall during the continuance of her marriage to the Duke 1212 of Cornwall, and a contingent annuity of £30,000 a year in the event of her surviving His Royal Highness; the same provision in both cases as was made for our present Queen on her marriage with his present Majesty. We propose that the contingent annuity of £30,000 a year then provided for the present Queen, in the event of her surviving the King, should be raised to £70,000 a year. I may state that the annuity granted under similar circumstances to Queen Adelaide was £100,000 a year. We propose that an annuity of £18,000 a year for the joint lives of the three princesses the daughters of the King, diminishing by £600 a year on the death of any one of them, should be paid over to trustees precisely on the lines of the Prince of Wales's Children Act of 1899, to be devoted to their benefit in such way as from time to time His Majesty may appoint, subject to the assent of the First Lord of the Treasury and the Chancellor of the Exchequer of the day.

The total financial result of the proposals for the Civil List and for those members of the Royal Family not included in the Civil List, excluding the contingent annuities and including the £25,000 a year proposed to be placed on the Consolidated Fund for the pensions of the servants of the late Queen, amounts to £543,000 a year, as against £476,000 a year charged for similar purposes during the late reign, an increase of £67,000 a year, as will be found by hon. Members in the Report of the Committee, falling to £42,000 a year, when the pensions to the servants of the late Queen have disappeared. That is in itself, I think, a very moderate increase. It is due, of course, to the provision for the Queen Consort, and also to the necessity for providing for increased expenditure in the Royal Household; but I should like, before I conclude, to mention one point with regard to it. The Committee are aware that this £543,000 a year does not directly fall on the taxpayer. Under the Civil List Act of Her late Majesty, the hereditary revenues of the Crown would revert to the present King on 22nd July next, unless Parliament provided a new Civil List. These hereditary revenues amounted in the year 1900 to £452,000 a year— 1213 £420,000 net receipts from Crown lands, and £32,000 from minor hereditary revenues. At the accession of the late Queen, they amounted to no more than £245,000 a year—£240,000 from the Crown lands in the year 1839, and £5,000 from the minor hereditary revenues in the year 1838. Now, Sir, I do not contend for a moment—I have never contended, that the Civil List of the Crown should he fixed according to the amount yielded by those hereditary revenues. It was not so fixed at the accession of our late Queen, and it ought not to be so fixed, because what we ought to consider in this case is what may be a necessary and proper provision to be made for the Sovereign and the Royal Family. But yet it is worth notice that out of this £543,000 a year no less than £452,000 was provided in the year 1900 from sources not directly falling upon the taxpayers of this country; and, as the Crown revenues are increasing, as they produced last year more than they did in the previous year, I think we may venture to anticipate that there will be a still smaller charge in the future. Of course the Crown revenues are composed of receipts from very different sources—some from agricultural land, some from minerals, some from timber, and some from ground rents in London. It is therefore very difficult to prophesy what may be in the future the total yield of an estate of this kind, because any increase on the one hand may be counterbalanced by a decrease on the other. But so far as can be anticipated, having regard to the fact that some valuable leases in London will shortly fall in, and that it may be possible in this way considerably to increase the receipts from the Crown estates, I think I may venture to say that if the revenues from other sources remain at the point at which they now stand, no more than £33,000 a year during the next sixteen years will be the average charge on the taxpayers, beyond these Crown revenues, for the Civil List and the grants to the other members of the Royal Family which we now propose.

I have completed the explanation which it was my duty to make to the Committee. I recommend these proposals—which have been stamped, as I have already 1214 stated, with the approval of the important tribunal to which the. House referred the question—to the fair consideration of the House of Commons. I think they are a just and reasonable settlement as between the Crown and the people for the present reign. I think that, on the one hand, they are sufficient for the necessary requirements of the Crown. On the other hand, I am sure that they impose but a very small burden on the people, and I trust that they may be received by this House with as general an acquiescence as they were received by the Select Committee.