Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s rent scandal yesterday triggered a probe dragging in other senior royals.
MPs announced an inquiry into all royal homes owned by the Crown Estate, following public outrage at Andrew’s ‘peppercorn’ rent at Royal Lodge.
They will examine the Prince and Princess of Wales’s deal on their new family home, Forest Lodge, in Windsor Great Park.
And the investigation – dubbed the ‘opening of Pandora’s box’ – will also look at the rent-free arrangement enjoyed by the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh in their nearby sprawling mansion, Bagshot Park.
The public accounts committee’s inquiry was launched after the Crown Estate compiled an astonishing report into royal properties. It revealed:
- Royal Lodge is in such disrepair that Andrew could lose his £500,000 ‘compensation’ for being booted out early;
- William and Kate pay ‘market rent’ on eight-bedroom Forest Lodge;
- The late Queen’s cousin Princess Alexandra’s rent in sought-after Richmond Park is around £225 a month, while Edward and Sophie fixed a deal in 2007 to pay £5million up front and then essentially live rent-free;
- Andrew has a legal right to stay in Royal Lodge until October next year, though is expected to be out much sooner.
Public concern about ‘cut-price’ royal homes was sparked after the scandal of Andrew’s favourable ‘one peppercorn’ arrangement emerged in his lease on Royal Lodge, the 30-room mansion where he and ex-wife Sarah Ferguson have lived rent-free for two decades.
The former Duke of York was stripped of all his royal titles, including ‘prince’, in October after a leaked email published by The Mail on Sunday proved he had lied in his interview with BBC’s Newsnight about when he ended his association with paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
There had been pressure on Andrew, 65, to move from his Windsor home for more than a year, in a saga that become known as the Siege of Royal Lodge.
He will, the Daily Mail understands, move into exile on the King’s Sandringham estate next year.
Now MPs on the cross-party committee want to know about Andrew’s financial arrangements for Royal Lodge and whether taxpayers’ interests have been properly protected – along with details of other royal homes.
Privately owned residences, such as Highgrove House and Princess Anne’s Gatcombe Park, along with grace-and-favour homes, will not be included as part of the investigation.
But royal biographer Ingrid Seward, the editor-in-chief of Majesty magazine, warned: ‘This is the opening of Pandora’s box. Once those MPs have got their big noses in there, they are not going to let this go.’
She said William and Kate, who pay market rent but have been dragged into the parliamentary probe, will ‘be blaming Andrew for this, and quite rightly so’, adding: ‘If he had not been so avaricious, money-grabbing and dishonest, none of this would have happened.’
While not a government department, the Crown Estate operates with commercial objectives and has a duty to maximise value for the public purse.
Its profits go back to taxpayers and, among other things, fund the Sovereign Grant, which pays for the monarch’s official duties and the upkeep of the Royal Family’s official residences, and was set at £132million this year.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, chairman of the public accounts committee, said: ‘Having reflected on what we have received [when the committee raised questions about Royal Lodge], the information provided clearly forms the beginnings of a basis for an inquiry.’
MPs on the committee have not ruled out calling in members of the Royal Family to give evidence.
They have the power to ‘send for persons, papers and records’, although royals, MPs and peers may only be invited, not compelled.
It is believed that senior courtiers would be summoned to give evidence instead.
Sir Geoffrey said there had been ‘considerable and understandable public interest in the spending of public money’ in relation to Andrew, stemming from the ‘serious and disturbing allegations made against him’.
He wrote to the Crown Estate in October to ‘seek assurance that the rationale for the [Royal Lodge] lease justifies the minimal rent charged’.
Prince Andrew’s 75-year lease, which started in 2003, obliged him to pay £1million up front and spend £7.5million on renovations, before the ‘one peppercorn’ rent kicked in thereafter.
All the royals are expected to spend money on maintaining their properties.
The Crown Estate is an independent commercial business established to control and manage £15billion of the nation’s properties, with profits going to the Treasury.
It does not own ‘grace and favour’ properties, or the royal palaces, but has five royal homes under its wing: Royal Lodge, Bagshot Park, Forest Lodge and The Cottage, in Windsor Great Park, and Thatched House Lodge in Richmond.
Campaigners have questioned how Edward, 61, and his wife Sophie can defend living in 120-room Bagshot Park when the Crown Estate could rent it out on the open market with the taxpayer benefiting.
Under a contract signed by his company in 2007, Edward took out a 150-year lease for an up-front fee of £5million.
It permits the Duke of Edinburgh to pay an undisclosed ‘peppercorn’ rent – so-called because historically some leases cost just one peppercorn a year.
Yesterday’s Crown Estate report reveals that William and Kate, who moved into Grade II-listed Forest Lodge during the October half-term, hold ‘a 20-year non-assignable lease’ and have ‘open market rent’ on what they hope will become their ‘forever home’.
Forest Lodge is estimated to be worth around £16million, with rents unofficially estimated to be anywhere from £32,000 to £100,000 per month.
The actual rent is unknown but was assessed by upmarket estate agents Savills and Hamptons, acting on behalf of the Crown Estate, and Knight Frank, acting for the Prince and Princess of Wales, the Crown Estate said.
Princess Alexandra’s rent arrangement for Thatched House Lodge is complicated and involves two leases, one for a fixed £700 a year and the other on a rising scale, which taken together suggests she owed about £2,700 this year, or around £225 a month.
Her daughter Marina Ogilvy, 59, lives in The Cottage in Windsor Great Park and pays ‘the prevailing market value’.
After completing its inquiry, the committee is likely to produce a report on its findings which may include recommendations to ministers. There was no comment from Buckingham Palace.
