Extending the Civil List to billionaires?

[ursaminortaur]

The Civil List was abolished by George Osborne in 2011 and replaced by a Sovereign Grant.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_list

The abolition of the Civil List was announced in the spending review statement to the House of Commons on 20 October 2010 by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne. In its place, he said, "the Royal Household will receive a new Sovereign Support Grant linked to a portion of the revenue of the Crown Estate". The Crown Estate is a statutory corporation, run on commercial lines by the Crown Estate Commissioners and generates revenue for HM Treasury every year (an income surplus of £210.7 million for the year ended 31 March 2010).[9] This income is received by the Crown and given to the state as a result of the agreement reached in 1760 that has been renewed at the beginning of each subsequent reign. The Sovereign Grant Act 2011 received royal assent on 18 October 2011. Under this Act, the Sovereign Grant now funds all of the official expenditure of the monarchy, not just the expenditure previously borne by the Civil List.

It appears though that this Tory change because of an inbuilt ratchet effect and its ties to the profits of the Crown Estate has become so profitable that an embarrassed King Charles has turned down a potential £250m pay rise.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/apr/05/how-tory-royal-funding-deal-gave-rise-to-king-charless-potential-cash-windfall

Monarch rejects £250m pay rise resulting from David Cameron’s ‘generous’ shake-up of royal funding

King Charles III’s public rejection of a pay rise potentially worth as much as £250m a year in extra taxpayer money has laid bare the extraordinarily generous funding arrangement introduced by the former prime minister David Cameron.

The sovereign grant deal, ushered in by Cameron and his chancellor, George Osborne, in 2011, has already resulted in a sharp rise in public money going to the monarchy over the last decade.

In the first financial year of the deal – 2012-13 – the budget to fund the monarchy was set at £31m. Last year, the monarch received £86.3m, including a substantial amount to refurbish Buckingham Palace. According to the terms of the sovereign grant prescribed in legislation, Charles would potentially be in line for future payments in excess of £330m a year.

[odysseus2000]

The Civil List was abolished by George Osborne in 2011 and replaced by a Sovereign Grant.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_list

The abolition of the Civil List was announced in the spending review statement to the House of Commons on 20 October 2010 by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne. In its place, he said, "the Royal Household will receive a new Sovereign Support Grant linked to a portion of the revenue of the Crown Estate". The Crown Estate is a statutory corporation, run on commercial lines by the Crown Estate Commissioners and generates revenue for HM Treasury every year (an income surplus of £210.7 million for the year ended 31 March 2010).[9] This income is received by the Crown and given to the state as a result of the agreement reached in 1760 that has been renewed at the beginning of each subsequent reign. The Sovereign Grant Act 2011 received royal assent on 18 October 2011. Under this Act, the Sovereign Grant now funds all of the official expenditure of the monarchy, not just the expenditure previously borne by the Civil List.

It appears though that this Tory change because of an inbuilt ratchet effect and its ties to the profits of the Crown Estate has become so profitable that an embarrassed King Charles has turned down a potential £250m pay rise.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/apr/05/how-tory-royal-funding-deal-gave-rise-to-king-charless-potential-cash-windfall

Monarch rejects £250m pay rise resulting from David Cameron’s ‘generous’ shake-up of royal funding

King Charles III’s public rejection of a pay rise potentially worth as much as £250m a year in extra taxpayer money has laid bare the extraordinarily generous funding arrangement introduced by the former prime minister David Cameron.

The sovereign grant deal, ushered in by Cameron and his chancellor, George Osborne, in 2011, has already resulted in a sharp rise in public money going to the monarchy over the last decade.

In the first financial year of the deal – 2012-13 – the budget to fund the monarchy was set at £31m. Last year, the monarch received £86.3m, including a substantial amount to refurbish Buckingham Palace. According to the terms of the sovereign grant prescribed in legislation, Charles would potentially be in line for future payments in excess of £330m a year.

That’s the way to do it!

Regards,

[CliffEdge]

I agree, but I'm not advocating for all citizens to be given this treatment, simply a tiny number of them. And yes, the situation with the monarch was unique, but I don't see how that's relevant. Plenty of laws and principles and procedures arose from unique circumstances that have no relevance today (at the risk of cliche, the Magna Carta is just one example).

Confiscating the assets of the ten richest people in the UK would create a huge incentive to:

1) Not be in the top ten
2) Leave the UK if you are likely to be in the top ten

The economic damage would be immense. Britain would become a pariah state when it comes to investment, having set the precedent that if you're too successful the state will nick it all. The exodus of people and capital would become a torrent.

Then there's the massive agency problem caused by administering the confiscated assets. History tells us that nationalised businesses are poorly managed, with costs being dramatically increased as politicians use them as employment programs for favoured groups and to promote their pet programs as opposed to profit maximisation and servicing their customers. Pre-Privatisation British Telecom is the poster boy for this; a hugely overmanned business where the customer was very low down on the set of priorities (e.g. a six month wait to get a new phone line installed was not uncommon).

Absolutely, it would be an inflationary (and all kinds of other) disaster. Daft.

[CliffEdge]

Confiscating the assets of the ten richest people in the UK

I am not advocating that, there would be no confiscation of assets. That's not what the civil list system does.

Pre-Privatisation British Telecom is the poster boy for this; a hugely overmanned business where the customer was very low down on the set of priorities (e.g. a six month wait to get a new phone line installed was not uncommon).

Nope. It's not nationalisation either. Apologies if I wasn't clear, but here's what I'm talking about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_list

(Totally silly aside: "a hugely overmanned business where the customer was very low down on the set of priorities" is almost exactly how Elon Musk described Twitter before he cut 80% of its workforce!)

ROFL. Sorry for those who lost their jobs but it would have been better if he'd cut 100% of the workforce, maybe then they could go and do something worthwhile.

[CliffEdge]

It still isn't clear what you are talking about.

I realise the civil list was abolished and replaced with a modified system. I'm just using it as it existed (and as it now exists in that Act) as a model. It's an example, if you like, which you can use to discuss the pros and cons of what I'm suggesting. That is, it's not taxation, nor confiscation, nor privitisation, nor some kind of attack or socialist plot - unless the way we fund our monarchy counts as those things. It's a way of starting to deal with wealth inequality using an exsiting system. BTW this is also worth a look https://www.thecrownestate.co.uk/about-us

I agree the central question would be whether the individuals concerned would not want, or takes steps to avoid, having the "salary". In the former case they'd need to explain what material difference an income of say, £10M per year would make to an indivdual who is used to making £100M or more. Would more cars, houses or gold rings be justified? Certainly more business investment would be welcome since that might generate more profit and jobs, and there's nothing that would be stopping that under the proposed arrangement. They still own the businesses. It's just the profits from it that woudn't go to them.

The latter case I agree is harder to work out, since defining "ownership" of wealth is slippery. I think that would take more thought.

Of course, if you don't think wealth inequality is a problem, or that it is but allowing people to make as much money as they can means there's nothing that can be done, then there's not a lot of point in discussing it

This is so clueless I'm flabbergasted. But I thank you for starting an interesting thread.

[TUK020]

Charles is a billionaire.
It is inherited.
Do you think QE2's estate paid IHT?

[tjh290633]

Charles is a billionaire.
It is inherited.
Do you think QE2's estate paid IHT?

I suspect that the Crown Estate is a trust, not a personal holding.

TJH

[mc2fool]

Charles is a billionaire.
It is inherited.
Do you think QE2's estate paid IHT?

I suspect that the Crown Estate is a trust, not a personal holding.

TJH

The £16bn Crown Estate is separate to Charles' £1.8bn personal wealth.

https://www.thecrownestate.co.uk/
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/ng-interactive/2023/apr/20/revealed-king-charless-private-fortune-estimated-at-almost-2bn

[Charlottesquare]

Confiscating the assets of the ten richest people in the UK

I am not advocating that, there would be no confiscation of assets. That's not what the civil list system does.

Pre-Privatisation British Telecom is the poster boy for this; a hugely overmanned business where the customer was very low down on the set of priorities (e.g. a six month wait to get a new phone line installed was not uncommon).

Nope. It's not nationalisation either. Apologies if I wasn't clear, but here's what I'm talking about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_list

(Totally silly aside: "a hugely overmanned business where the customer was very low down on the set of priorities" is almost exactly how Elon Musk described Twitter before he cut 80% of its workforce!)

So, if you leave the UK do you get your assets back and does the system then apply to the person that previously was at 11 on the list ?
In effect is it a system annually applied with promotion and relegation?

[ayshfm1]

Can someone define poor?

According to my grandad, who is long dead and wrote in 1980, there are no poor people anymore (his definition of poor was the poor of 1900's Britain and from the description I concur they were poor)

I'm up for fixing poverty as long as it has a defined and non-moving definition. What we have in this country is relative poverty, which IMO is less about helping the poor and more about providing a gravy train for workshy liberals.

[odysseus2000]

Can someone define poor?

According to my grandad, who is long dead and wrote in 1980, there are no poor people anymore (his definition of poor was the poor of 1900's Britain and from the description I concur they were poor)

I'm up for fixing poverty as long as it has a defined and non-moving definition. What we have in this country is relative poverty, which IMO is less about helping the poor and more about providing a gravy train for workshy liberals.

Poverty is a complex subject, but under any material measures that I can quantify, folk are generally better off than their parents, but there are other aspects such as the access to medicine, financial & educational services that are all becoming stretched for working class folk & there are still families for whom basic food is an expense that troubles their finances. There is also the poverty of ambition with many young folk no longer believing that they will ever be able to buy a house or get a job that will pull them out of their money worries as they can not pay the educational loans back that are needed to get a degree which has become essential for many jobs & immigrants take manual jobs putting deflation on salaries.

There are always a number of folk who don’t want to work, but the differential for the ones that would like to work over those that want benefits are often too small to be attractive & quality of life increasing.

What happens if the potential of AI to replace humans in many jobs becomes a reality? Over a very short period a lot of currently comfortable folk will find their jobs gone.

It seems very likely to me that at some rapidly approaching point the whole job & reward concepts that have lasted since the dawn of civilisation will have to be adapted to deal with job losses due to AI. If this is not handled well things can get ugly very quickly.

Regards,