The funding for the Prince of Wales that comes out of the taxpayers pocket has increased by almost 12%, at exactly the same time as budgets are being slashed across all government departments. Accounts that have just been published show that Prince Charles and his household had received £2.19m from the publics purse during the financial year ending April 2012, up from £1.96m in the previous year.
His total income for the year was £20.48m, which mostly came from the £18.3m profits made by his private Duchy of Cornwall estates, was taxed at only 22% once deductions of official business expenditure had been made. The figures also showed the rail and air travel costs for both the Prince and his wife Camilla to attend their official engagements, and this was also up from £1.08m to £1,318,000. These trips covered almost 48,000 miles.
The figure most were interested in, however, was extremely vague, as there was very little about how much the Prince had spent on the wedding of his eldest son Prince William to Kate Middleton. Neither was there any breakdown of the additional costs to the Prince of having Kate as a fully fledged member of the Royal family.
There was no comment either from William Nye, who has been his principal private secretary since September 2011, on the recent report that Prince Charles had spent £35,000 on Kate’s wardrobe so far this year. It is well known that Charles forks out for all the outfits that his daughter in law wears on official engagements, and these come from a £2.9m budget that is for the offices of the Prince, William and Kate, and Prince Harry.
Clarence House has said that the cost of the Royal wedding was split between Prince Charles, the Middleton family and the Queen, and they had between them paid for all the things involved in a wedding that every family pays for.
