LETTER: Royal cash should be spent on key services

I was not surprised at the generosity of ordinary people who donated. At the time of writing this email, the fantastic amount of £47 million was raised by the appeal overall — just over half of what the official funding is to be given to the Queenat £76m.

The sovereign grant, which is supposed to finance the royal family, has increased by 
145 per cent in the last six years.

This while councils have faced cuts in their funding year after year after year. This raises some serious questions for me.

1) How much did any member of the royal family donate to this cause?

2) Why should this royal funding have been given in the first place, given that 20 years ago the Queen was estimated to have a wealth of £502billion? 3) Why haven’t the royal family maintained their palace with some of that wealth instead of the taxpayers having to pay £369m for refurbishment of Buckingham Palace? That is 7.85 times more than has yet been raised by Children in Need this year. Homeowners and councils are expected to maintain their properties to a decent standard, and this despite year after year after year of cuts to council spending. 
I see on there is widespread anger at this news. I’m not surprised. I also saw on the BBC news that two massive warships, which have nearly been completed, may now have to be scrapped due to defence cuts. Couldn’t those millions of pounds have been better spent on funding the NHS, police, schools and local authorities so they could genuinely meet the needs of the most vulnerable in society instead of cutting services? Surely someone has their priorities wrong when we have to fundraise to meet the needs of the next generation whereas an out dated institution can have money thrown at it like it was going out of fashion.

David Fox

By email