WHAT will have surprised viewers of the recent Dispatches programme, The King, the Prince, and Their Secret Millions, will not have been the wealth of the royal family, nor indeed the generosity of the British taxpayers who grant them millions every year. It will have been their greed.
 
Parliament for years has been far too lenient about the ways the royals exploit their “subjects,” those people whose best interests they all claim to hold so dear. Millions will be glued to their televisions on Christmas Day while the hypocrisy flows out in the king’s speech by the bucketload. Rest assured — apologies, there will be none.
 
The Guardian, to its credit, alerted readers a year ago about one feudal practice the greedy royal family uses to augment their fortunes, “bona vacantia,” where the crown makes millions by absorbing the assets of those who die without leaving a will.
 
This should have been consigned to history’s dustbin years ago, but it seems the royals’ greed won’t even allow them to give up this obnoxious habit, giving them, as it has done over the last 10 years, £60 million. Ex-MP Norman Baker aptly described it as a “royal fruit machine.”
 
The King’s Duchy of Lancaster estate and Prince William’s Duchy of Cornwall, both founded in the 14th century, claim the assets of all those who die in these regions intestate, if relatives cannot be found.

It happens when the last known residence of the dead person lies within what was known historically as Lancashire (or Cornwall) county palatine. You can imagine how profitable this proved for George VI when so many servicemen died fighting in the second world war for, you’ve guessed it, king and country.
 
Some fuss about this led to royal promises that the money would go to charity, but … again, you’re ahead of me, it’s been used instead to smarten up properties for rent, owned by the profit-at-all-cost duchies. So much for making charitable donations and so much more about the GRF lying and deceiving their “subjects.”
 
Does the most expensive monarchy in Europe have to behave in such a way? It’s not even that it has to pay taxes like the rest of us. The royal family pays no inheritance tax, so none of the vast wealth each monarch amasses gets handed to the state to benefit those subjects they all care so much about.

The late queen’s private wealth amounted, according to some estimates, to around £650m. The vast profits made by the aforementioned duchies, and we’re talking billions here, are not subject to corporation tax or capital gains tax.