Queen's
consent
Revealed: Queen lobbied for change in law to hide
her private wealth
Elizabeth’s
private lawyer put pressure on Edward Heath’s ministers to alter a law that
would have revealed her shareholdings to the public, government memos show.
Monarch dispatched private solicitor to secure
exemption from transparency law
by David
Pegg and Rob Evans
Sun 7 Feb
2021 15.00 GMT
The Queen
successfully lobbied the government to change a draft law in order to conceal
her “embarrassing” private wealth from the public, according to documents discovered
by the Guardian.
A series of
government memos unearthed in the National Archives reveal that Elizabeth
Windsor’s private lawyer put pressure on ministers to alter proposed
legislation to prevent her shareholdings from being disclosed to the public.
Following
the Queen’s intervention, the government inserted a clause into the law
granting itself the power to exempt companies used by “heads of state” from new
transparency measures.
The
arrangement, which was concocted in the 1970s, was used in effect to create a
state-backed shell corporation which is understood to have placed a veil of
secrecy over the Queen’s private shareholdings and investments until at least
2011.
The true
scale of her wealth has never been disclosed, though it has been estimated to
run into the hundreds of millions of pounds.
Queen
Elizabeth II
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The scale of Queen Elizabeth’s wealth has never been disclosed but she feared a
1973 bill would allow the public to scrutinise her finances. Photograph: Adrian
Dennis/AFP
Evidence of
the monarch’s lobbying of ministers was uncovered by a Guardian investigation
into the royal family’s use of an arcane parliamentary procedure, known as
Queen’s consent, to secretly influence the formation of British laws.
Unlike the
better-known procedure of royal assent, a formality that marks the moment when
a bill becomes law, Queen’s consent must be sought before legislation can be
approved by parliament.
It requires
ministers to alert the Queen when legislation might affect either the royal
prerogative or the private interests of the crown.
The website
of the royal family describes it as “a long established convention” and
constitutional scholars have tended to regard consent as an opaque but harmless
example of the pageantry that surrounds the monarchy.
But
documents unearthed in the National Archives, which the Guardian is publishing
this week, suggest that the consent process, which gives the Queen and her
lawyers advance sight of bills coming into parliament, has enabled her to
secretly lobby for legislative changes.
Thomas
Adams, a specialist in constitutional law at Oxford University who reviewed the
new documents, said they revealed “the kind of influence over legislation that
lobbyists would only dream of”. The mere existence of the consent procedure, he
said, appeared to have given the monarch “substantial influence” over draft
laws that could affect her.
‘Disclosure
would be embarrassing’
The papers
reveal that in November 1973 the Queen feared that a proposed bill to bring
transparency to company shareholdings could enable the public to scrutinise her
finances. As a result she dispatched her private lawyer to press the government
to make changes.
Matthew
Farrer, then a partner at the prestigious law firm Farrer & Co, visited
civil servants at the then Department of Trade and Industry to discuss the
proposed transparency measures in the companies bill, which had been drafted by
Edward Heath’s government.
The bill
sought to prevent investors from secretly building up significant stakes in
listed companies by acquiring their shares through front companies or nominees.
It would therefore include a clause granting directors the right to demand that
any nominees owning their company’s shares reveal, when asked, the identities
of their clients.
Three
crucial pages of correspondence between civil servants at the trade department
reveal how, at that meeting, Farrer relayed the Queen’s objection that the law
would reveal her private investments in listed companies, as well as their
value. He proposed that the monarch be exempted.
“I have
spoken to Mr Farrer,” a civil servant called CM Drukker wrote on 9 November.
“As I had recalled he – or rather, I think, his clients – are quite as
concerned over the risk of disclosure to directors of a company as to
shareholders and the general public.
“He
justifies this not only because of the risk of inadvertent or indiscreet
leaking to other people,” Drukker continued, “but more basically because
disclosure to any person would be embarrassing.”
After being
informed that exempting only the crown from the legislation would mean it was
obvious any shareholdings so anonymised were the Queen’s property, Farrer, the
correspondence states, “took fright somewhat, emphasised that the problem was
taken very seriously and suggested – somewhat tentatively – that we had put
them into this quandary and must therefore find a way out.”
Drukker
continued: “He did not like any suggestions that holdings were not these days
so embarrassing, given the wide knowledge of, for example, landed property held.
Nor did he see that the problem might be resolved by any avoidance of holdings
in particular companies. It was the knowledge per se that was objectionable.”
“Mr Farrer
was not only concerned that information about shares held for the Queen, and
transactions in them, could become public knowledge (since it would appear on
the company’s register) and thus the subject of possible controversy,” Roberts
wrote.
“He regards
any disclosure of beneficial ownership of shares by the crown, even if
restricted to the directors of the company, as potentially embarrassing,
because of the risk of leaks.”
He
continued: “Mr Farrer has accepted an invitation to go into the matter with us,
but has said that he will not be able to do so for a few days, until he has
taken instructions from his principals.”
Secrecy
clause
By the
following month the Heath government had developed an ingenious proposal
through which the Queen’s dilemma might be resolved.
“With the
help of the Bank of England, my department have evolved the following
solutions, which will appear in the bill,” wrote the Conservative trade
secretary, Geoffrey Howe, to a fellow minister.
Howe
proposed that the government would insert a new clause into the bill granting
the government the power to exempt certain companies from the requirement to
declare the identities of their shareholders.
Officially,
the change would be for the benefit of a variety of wealthy investors. “Such a
class could be generally defined to cover, say, heads of state, governments,
central monetary authorities, investment boards and international bodies formed
by governments,” Howe continued.
In
practice, however, the Queen was plainly the intended beneficiary of the
arrangement. The government intended to create a shell company through which a
range of these investors could hold shares. It meant that any curious member of
the public would be unable to pinpoint which of the shares owned by the company
were held on behalf of the monarch.
“My
department have discussed this solution with the legal advisers to the Queen,”
Howe noted. “While they cannot of course commit themselves to using the
suggested new facility, they accept that it is a perfectly reasonable solution
to the problem which they face, and that they could not ask us to do more. I am
therefore arranging that the necessary provisions should appear in the bill.”
It would be
three years before the bill and its secrecy clause would come into law. In
February 1974 Heath called a general election, resulting in all legislation
that was going through parliament being thrown out.
However,
the proposal was resuscitated by the subsequent Labour government under Harold
Wilson and became law in 1976, with much of the original bill simply copied
into the second edition.
The
exemption was almost immediately granted to a newly formed company called Bank
of England Nominees Limited, operated by senior individuals at the Bank of
England, which has previously been identified as a possible vehicle through
which the Queen held shares.
Shares believed
to be owned by the Queen were transferred to the company in April 1977,
according to a 1989 book by the journalist Andrew Morton.
The
exemption is believed to have helped conceal the Queen’s private fortune until
at least 2011, when the government disclosed that Bank of England Nominees was
no longer covered by it.
Four years
ago, the company was closed down. Precisely what happened to the shares it held
on behalf of others is not clear. As a dormant company, it never filed public
accounts itemising its activities.
‘A possible
landmine’
The use of
Queen’s consent is normally recorded in Hansard, the official record of
parliamentary debates, before a bill’s third reading. However, no notification
of consent for the 1976 bill appears in the record, possibly because it was
only sought for the 1973 version that never made it to third reading.
Howe, who
died in 2015, appears to have disclosed the role of Queen’s consent – which is
invoked when ministers believe a draft law might affect the royal prerogative
or the private interests of the crown – during a parliamentary debate in 1975
in a previously unnoticed speech.
“In
relation to that draft legislation, as to any other, the advisers of the Queen,
as they do as a matter of routine, examined the bill to see whether it
contained, inadvertently or otherwise, any curtailment of the royal
prerogative,” Howe said.
Howe had
been prompted to speak in the parliamentary debate during a row caused by the
leak of high-level Whitehall papers to the Morning Star newspaper. The leak
revealed the government’s intention to exempt the Windsor wealth from the
companies bill.
It was a
major scoop for the communist newspaper, but the leaked papers did not
establish whether the Queen had lobbied the government to help conceal her
wealth.
At the
time, the Financial Times remarked that “a possible landmine for the
Conservatives would be if Buckingham Palace in 1973 had taken the initiative in
suggesting that disclosure of the Queen’s shareholdings should be excluded from
the bill”.
The newly
discovered papers reveal exactly that. “At the very least, it seems clear that
representations on the part of the crown were material in altering the shape of
the legislation,” Adams said.
When
contacted by the Guardian, Buckingham Palace did not answer any questions about
the Queen’s lobbying to alter the companies bill, or whether she had used the
consent procedure to put pressure on the government.
In a
statement, a spokesperson for the Queen said: “Queen’s consent is a
parliamentary process, with the role of sovereign purely formal. Consent is
always granted by the monarch where requested by government.
“Whether
Queen’s consent is required is decided by parliament, independently from the
royal household, in matters that would affect crown interests, including
personal property and personal interests of the monarch,” she said.
“If consent
is required, draft legislation is, by convention, put to the sovereign to grant
solely on advice of ministers and as a matter of public record.”
Published19
hours ago
By Jonny
Dymond
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-55975199
The Queen
was shown legislation which may have forced her to reveal her private finances
in the 1970s "by convention", Buckingham Palace says.
Papers
published by the Guardian suggest the monarch's personal lawyers successfully
lobbied to change a draft law to conceal her wealth.
The
documents were unearthed as part of an investigation into Queen's consent.
It is a
process where Parliament asks for consent when debating bills which affect the
Crown's interests.
More than
1,000 draft laws have been seen by the Queen or the Prince of Wales before being
approved by MPs as part of the procedure, the Guardian said.
Queen's
consent is always granted where requested, the palace said.
The
long-established convention sees the monarch asked to provide consent by
Parliament when it is considering legislation "which would affect the
prerogative or interests of the Crown", according to the Royal Family's
website.
This
process is separate to Royal Assent, where the monarch formally approves to a
bill passed by Parliament for it to become law.
Royal
Assent has not been refused since 1708.
The
government memos, found in the National Archives, date back to 1973.
They show
that the Queen, concerned that new legislation might force her to reveal her
private holdings in companies, despatched lawyers to argue her case with the
then Department of Trade and Industry.
A revision
to the draft law subsequently enabled her as a head of state to sidestep the
new regulations.
The
Guardian suggests that early sight of the draft legislation, under the powers
of Queen's consent, gave the monarch an unrivalled opportunity to influence the
legislation to her advantage.
This is a
good get by the Guardian - shining a light into the always-sensitive
interactions between palace and government as regards money.
The palace
line on this is pretty simple - the mechanism of Queen's consent is a matter
for government and discussions between the sovereign through her lawyers and
government departments are a fact of life.
Getting
first sight of legislation that may affect you is a pretty significant
advantage for any monarch. Not because anyone thinks about a block or veto or a
threat of it. But because then you get a chance to get your lawyers round
early.
Why is the
palace denying a threat of a block, something that no one has alleged? Because,
says a source, the allegations put to it by the Guardian were broader than
those that turned up in the story published yesterday.
It's not
entirely surprising that given the consultation in these areas, the Queen would
have something to say.
The Queen
is not a normal citizen. The tone of the correspondence published by the
Guardian is a little surprising - it suggests a degree of involvement that
belies the palace's claim that the mechanism is simply a formality.
The
Guardian has compiled a list of 1,062 parliamentary bills that it says have
been subject to Queen's consent since Elizabeth II's reign began in 1952 -
which works out at about 14 uses of the procedure per year.
It features
a wide range of legislation including laws which affected her private estates
in Balmoral and Sandringham.
A
Buckingham Palace spokesman said: "Queen's consent is a parliamentary
process, with the role of sovereign purely formal. Consent is always granted by
the monarch where requested by government. Any assertion that the sovereign has
blocked legislation is simply incorrect.
"Whether
Queen's consent is required is decided by Parliament, independently from the
royal household, in matters that would affect Crown interests, including
personal property and personal interests of the monarch.
"If
consent is required, draft legislation is, by convention, put to the sovereign
to grant solely on advice of ministers and as a matter of public record."
Adam Tucker
Now we know that the mysterious ‘Queen’s consent’ is
more than just a procedural formality, it must be scrapped
Mon 8 Feb
2021 15.26 GMT
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/feb/08/queen-power-british-law-queens-consent
The
Guardian’s investigation revealing new detail on the impact of “Queen’s
consent” in our legal system marks a significant advance in our understanding
of an archaic and mysterious part of the UK constitution. It should prompt
grave concerns about the practice’s continued existence.
Queen’s
consent is a procedural rule, internal to the workings of parliament and of
unclear origins, which requires the monarch’s consent to be obtained for
certain types of legislation – before they can be presented for final approval
by either house of parliament. It must not be confused with the equally archaic
process of royal assent which, in contrast, is well understood, applies to
legislation already approved by both houses of parliament, and which is widely
accepted as being purely symbolic in almost all realistic circumstances.
The
anti-democratic potential of the consent process is obvious: it gives the Queen
a possible veto, to be exercised in secret, over proposed laws. But there has
been no way to know whether it was realising that potential or not, and so no
way to know how damaging the process might be, because its workings have
previously remained hidden from public view.
In
particular, two key aspects have generally been unavailable in the public
domain: the range of legislation that is subject to the process as it goes
through parliament; and the significance of the process, whether it is a merely
symbolic or procedural step, or involves genuine reflection and negotiation on
the content of proposed laws. This week’s investigation uncovers significant
examples of both.
Until now,
the main indication of the range of legislation subject to the process was a
pamphlet intended to guide the parliamentary lawyers who select which proposals
require consent, and which don’t. The Queen’s consent is needed, according to
that pamphlet, for any legislation that would affect “the prerogative … the
hereditary revenues, the Duchy of Lancaster or the Duchy of Cornwall, and
personal or property interests of the crown”. Yet although it gives examples,
the pamphlet does not reveal in detail what kinds of legislation meet those
criteria, and how seriously they must impact those interests before the consent
process is invoked.
We now know
there has been a persistent practice of applying those criteria so broadly that
significant amounts of legislation regulating otherwise quite ordinary
activities have required consent. The Queen pays tax, so (for example) finance
laws require consent. The Queen is an employer, so (for example) child support
and pensions laws require consent. And so on. Quite superficial connections to the
interests of the crown are sufficient to trigger the Queen’s involvement.
Even less
information has been available on the substance of the process once triggered.
All correspondence containing requests for consent, replies and the
documentation of any related discussions have always been shrouded in absolute
privacy. The only clue to their existence is the routine formulaic confirmation
in parliament whenever consent has been given, which reveals nothing about the
process through which that consent was secured. So it has been impossible to
ascertain whether this is an essentially symbolic process, comparable with
royal assent and perhaps justifiable as symbolically acknowledging the Queen as
a formal part of the legislature; or whether it provided (or had the potential
to be used as) a genuine opportunity for the Queen to veto legislation or
influence policy.
But it is
now clear this process is far from merely symbolic. The documents uncovered by
the Guardian provide remarkable evidence that this process accords the Queen’s
advisers a genuine opportunity to negotiate with the government over changes in
proposed laws, that they do sometimes secure such changes before giving
consent, and that they are even prepared to threaten to withhold consent to
secure their policy preferences.
This degree
of involvement in the legislative process is unjustifiable. It is a serious
constitutional mistake that has survived only through being obscured. In the
famous formulation, the Queen in our constitutional monarchy has the rights “to
be consulted, to advise and to warn”. It is now clear that the process of
Queen’s consent goes beyond the boundaries of legitimate involvement set by
those rights.
In 2014, a
parliamentary committee contemplated the abolition of the process but,
expressly relying on the fact they saw “no evidence to suggest that legislation
is ever altered”, the members concluded it was a purely “formal … process”.
Convinced by its countervailing symbolic value, they stopped short of
recommending abolition. The revelations this week should prompt members of
parliament to revisit that 2014 decision. There is no place for this process in
the working of a 21st-century democracy.
Adam Tucker is a senior lecturer in constitutional law at the University of Liverpool
Buckingham Palace denies Queen blocked
legislation to conceal private wealth
'Any assertion that the Sovereign blocked legislation
is simply incorrect,' says spokesperson
Tom
Batchelor
@_tombatchelor
1 day ago
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/queen-wealth-blocked-bill-b1799122.html
Buckingham
Palace has described as “simply incorrect” any suggestion the Queen blocked a
piece of legislation in the 1970s to conceal her private wealth.
The
Guardian reported that the monarch's private lawyer had successfully lobbied
the government to change a draft law enabling companies used by “heads of state”
to be exempt from new transparency measures being considered at the time.
Material
held in the National Archives showed that in November 1973, the head of state
feared a Bill aimed at opening up company shareholdings may allow the public to
scrutinise her finances, the paper reported.
As a
result, the monarch’s lawyer spoke with civil servants at the then Department
of Trade and Industry about the Companies Bill and proposed the Queen be
exempted, The Guardian alleged.
According
to the newspaper, a civil servant warned at the time of the risk of
“embarrassing” disclosures if amendments were not made to the legislation,
which became law in 1976 and applied until at least 2011.
The
Guardian reported that the Queen's private wealth has never officially been
revealed although it is believed to amount to hundreds of millions of pounds.
Thomas
Adams, an associate professor of law at Oxford University, told the paper the
documents showed “the kind of influence over legislation that lobbyists would
only dream of”.
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Buckingham
Palace denied the monarch had sought to block the Bill.
The palace
said in a statement: “Queen’s Consent is a parliamentary process, with the role
of sovereign purely formal. Consent is always granted by the monarch where
requested by government. Any assertion that the sovereign has blocked
legislation is simply incorrect.
“Whether
Queen’s Consent is required is decided by parliament, independently from the
royal household, in matters that would affect Crown interests, including
personal property and personal interests of the monarch.
“If consent
is required, draft legislation is, by convention, put to the sovereign to grant
solely on advice of ministers and as a matter of public record.”
Queen's
consent
How Queen’s consent raises questions over UK
democracy
The monarch is not supposed to meddle in parliament.
But that key principle is now in doubt
by David
Pegg and Rob Evans
Sun 7 Feb
2021 15.00 GMT
The Queen
does not meddle in the affairs of parliament. That is a cornerstone of
Britain’s system of constitutional monarchy. Or at least it is supposed to be.
The
Guardian’s investigation into the secretive power of Queen’s consent, whereby
the monarch is provided with advance sight of draft laws and invited to approve
them, casts this fundamental assumption into doubt.
The investigation
uncovered evidence suggesting that she used the arcane procedure to lobby the
government to change a draft law in order to conceal her private wealth from
the public for decades.
The exact
origins of Queen’s consent are unclear. There is evidence it was first invoked
in 1728 in relation to maritime law, when King George II gave parliament
permission to debate the suppression of piracy bill.
“We don’t
know very much. It’s not a modern development,” said Dr Adam Tucker, a senior
lecturer in constitutional law at the University of Liverpool who was one of
three experts to give evidence to a parliamentary committee examining the
mechanism of consent in 2014.
In its
present incarnation, the procedure is supposed to apply to two categories of
laws. The first are those that affect the fundamental powers of state known as
the royal prerogative, such as the ability to declare war or conduct foreign
affairs. While formally such powers are vested in the person of the monarch, in
practice they are exercised by the government.
The second
category of laws in which consent is invoked is those affecting the revenues,
assets or interests of the crown, principally referring to the historical
landholdings known as the crown estate, the Queen’s estate, the Duchy of
Lancaster, and Prince Charles’s estate, the Duchy of Cornwall.
Current
guidance from government lawyers states that this also encompasses properties
owned by the Windsor family privately, such as Sandringham or Balmoral, as well
as the Queen’s private investments.
If
government lawyers advise that consent is required, the minister handling the
bill writes to the Queen’s private secretary, explaining how the law will
affect her and formally requesting her approval. On occasions, ministers have
stated that it was their “humble duty” to request her consent to bills,
according to Whitehall documents.
Copies of
the draft law are enclosed with the request, which is also sent to the Queen’s
private solicitors, Farrer & Co, who examine the draft bill and advise her.
At least two weeks are given for the royals and their lawyers to scrutinise the
draft law.
Buckingham
Palace insists that the monarch’s role is “purely formal”. Declassified files
show that from time to time the palace has complained that the Queen has not
been given enough time to respond, or that the government has treated the
procedure too casually.
In 1983,
Robin Butler, then an aide to the prime minister, warned that the procedure was
“not a formality since clauses in such bills frequently have to be referred by
the palace to the Queen’s solicitor for legal advice”.
A similar
provision for the Prince of Wales also exists for legislation that might affect
his private estate, the Duchy of Cornwall.
If consent
is withheld, parliament is in effect blocked from completing its scrutiny of
the law. “If Queen’s or prince’s consent is not signified (in a case where it
is required), the question on third reading of the bill … cannot be put,”
parliamentary guidance states.
Why should a sovereign have even a theoretical ability
to strangle legislation early in its life?
Rodney Brazier, constitutional law professor
Some
constitutionalists have previously harboured suspicions about maintaining an
anachronism like Queen’s consent in the 21st century.
Tucker
said: “It involves people reflecting upon the substance and the content of the
legislation. It involves a delay of two weeks, while the Queen’s lawyers are
given time to advise the Queen on the content of the legislation.”
He
contrasted the mechanism with that of royal assent, whereby the Queen formally
approves laws at the end of the legislative process, rather than during it.
“There is a real contrast between how serious, how substantive the two
processes are.”
Tucker and
two other constitutional scholars told the 2014 parliamentary committee that
the process had little or no democratic justification.
Robert
Blackburn, a professor of constitutional law at King’s College London, warned
of “an inherent danger that a misguided future monarch or prince of Wales,
holding strong moral views on the subject matter of a bill covered by the royal
consent procedure, might believe he or she is entitled to impose his opinion on
the matter”.
Buckingham Palace
Buckingham Palace insists the Queen’s role in
approving laws is ‘purely formal’.
Rodney
Brazier, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Manchester,
wrote that the monarch had a unique right among Britons to approve proposed
laws. “Why should a sovereign and a duke of Cornwall have that advantage, and
why should a sovereign have even a theoretical ability to strangle legislation
early in its life?” he said.
Neither the
government nor Buckingham Palace routinely release information disclosing what
opinions the monarch offered when asked to approve draft bills.
Previous
attempts to understand even the basic functioning of the opaque procedure have
been aggressively resisted. An academic who in 2011 requested the government’s guidelines
on how consent is applied spent two years fighting a legal case before it was
released.
Six years
ago the parliamentary committee recommended several changes to improve
transparency, but little was done.
Buckingham
Palace said Queen’s consent had only ever been refused on the advice of
ministers. “Whether Queen’s consent is required is decided by parliament,
independently from the royal household, in matters that would affect crown
interests, including personal property and personal interests of the monarch,”
a palace spokesperson said.
Monarchy
Prince Charles vetted laws that stop his tenants buying
their homes
Royals used secretive procedure to approve laws that
gave special exemptions to Duchy of Cornwall
Rob Evans,
David Pegg and Michael Barton
Tue 9 Feb
2021 15.00 GMTLast modified on Tue 9 Feb 2021 16.04 GMT
Royals used
secretive procedure to approve laws which gave special exemptions to Duchy of
Cornwall
The royal
family has used a secretive procedure to vet three parliamentary acts that have
prevented residents on Prince Charles’ estate from buying their own homes for
decades, the Guardian can reveal.
His £1bn
Duchy of Cornwall estate was later given special exemptions in the acts that
denied residents the legal right to buy their own homes outright.
Under the
opaque procedure, the Queen and Prince of Wales were allowed to vet the
contents of the bills by government ministers and approve them before they were
passed by parliament.
The
exemptions have left residents living in homes that have diminishing or no
financial value. The residents say they cannot borrow against their homes to
pay, for example, for social care fees for themselves and loved ones.
Jane
Giddins, who lives in one of the prince’s houses in a Somerset village, said a
“feudal and anachronistic” system had unfairly favoured Charles, to her
family’s detriment. “When we die, our kids will be left with a property that is
very difficult to sell,” she said.
The
exemptions enable the prince to preserve the financial value of his estate and
brings in income as the tenants have to pay rent to him each year. The
residents say they have been unable to find out why and how the heir to the
throne was able to secure preferential treatment from the government.
The prince
declined to comment when asked whether he or his family had lobbied the
government for the exemptions in the three acts.
However,
the Guardian has established that Prince Charles and his mother were allowed to
approve the contents of the three acts under an arcane parliamentary process
known as Queen’s consent.
Through this mechanism, the monarch has vetted more than 1,000 parliamentary bills during her reign to check whether any of them affect the crown or her private interests. (…)
Royals vetted more than 1,000 laws via Queen’s
consent
Exclusive: secretive procedure used to review laws
ranging from Brexit trade deal to inheritance and land policy
David Pegg,
Rob Evans and Michael Barton
Mon 8 Feb
2021 15.00 GMTLast modified on Mon 8 Feb 2021 17.53 GMT
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/08/royals-vetted-more-than-1000-laws-via-queens-consent
More than
1,000 laws have been vetted by the Queen or Prince Charles through a secretive
procedure before they were approved by the UK’s elected members of parliament,
the Guardian has established.
The huge
number of laws subject to royal vetting cover matters ranging from justice,
social security, pensions, race relations and food policy through to obscure
rules on car parking charges and hovercraft.
They
included draft laws that affected the Queen’s personal property such as her
private estates in Balmoral and Sandringham, and potentially anything deemed to
affect her personally.
The
Guardian has compiled a database of at least 1,062 parliamentary bills that
have been subjected to Queen’s consent, stretching from the beginning of
Elizabeth II’s reign through to the present day.
The
database illustrates that the opaque procedure of Queen’s consent has been
exercised far more extensively than was previously believed.
Under the
procedure, government ministers privately notify the Queen of clauses in draft
parliamentary bills and ask for her consent to debate them.
As part of
a series investigating the use of the consent procedure, the Guardian has
published documents from the National Archives that reveal the Queen has on
occasions used the procedure to privately lobby the government.
The
investigation uncovered evidence suggesting that she used the procedure to
persuade government ministers to change a 1970s transparency law in order to
conceal her private wealth from the public.
The
documents also show that on other occasions the monarch’s advisers demanded
exclusions from proposed laws relating to road safety and land policy that
appeared to affect her estates, and pressed for government policy on historic
sites to be altered.
The
database of 1,062 laws relates to legislation that the Queen vetted under
consent rules, and it is not known on which occasions she also lobbied for
changes to draft legislation. The Guardian has uncovered evidence of lobbying
for changes to at least four draft laws, but it is possible she interfered with
many more.
When asked
by the Guardian, the Queen’s representatives refused to say how many times she
had requested alterations to legislation since she came to the throne in 1952.
The royals
describe the consent process as “a long-established convention that the Queen
is asked by parliament to provide consent … for the debating of bills which
would affect the prerogative or interests of the crown”.
The database
compiled by the Guardian reveals the vast swathe of draft UK law that ministers
have decided to send to the palace for consideration.
Some of the
bills the Queen reviewed before they were passed by parliament relate to wealth
or taxation. One of the richest families in Britain, with the monarch’s
property investments exempt from inheritance tax and collections of fine art
and jewellery built up over centuries, the Windsors are notoriously guarded
about their finances.
Members of
the Windsor family can have their will sealed from the public, unlike any other
family in Britain, ensuring an unmatched level of secrecy around their private
wealth. No confirmed figure of the Windsor family’s wealth exists, though
estimates have placed it at hundreds of millions of pounds.
In 2014,
for example, the Queen and the heir to the throne screened the inheritance and
trustees’ powers bill. Two years earlier she vetted the trusts (capital and
income) bill. Trusts are legal arrangements often used by wealthy families to
protect their assets from both tax and public scrutiny.
She has
also screened bills covering whole swathes of government policymaking. At least
11 bills governing the railways have been vetted by the Queen, sometimes
relating to the land owned by the royal estates.
In 2013 the
Queen gave her consent to the parliamentary bill to build the High Speed 2 rail
line between London and Birmingham. Transport ministers had notified the palace
that the bill affected the “interests of the crown” as the department needed to
acquire 21 plots of land owned by the crown estate during the construction of
the line.
Some of the
bills subjected to Queen’s consent are remarkably obscure and ostensibly have
little relevance to the monarchy, raising questions about why the Windsors were
asked to vet the bills. They include a 1963 bill relating to the British
Museum, a 1986 bill on salmon, and the 2019 parking (code of practice) bill to
regulate the behaviour of private car-clamping firms.
Dr Adam
Tucker, a specialist in constitutional law at Liverpool University, said the
breadth of laws made to undergo the Queen’s consent procedure was startling.
“A lot of
these bills are not distinctively about the crown, or mainly about the crown,
or obviously about the crown in any way,” he said. “And yet they obviously
still have some content which drags them into the process.
“Seeing the
sheer range, in this relentless list form, really drives home the sheer breadth
of things that the procedure captures.”
In other
instances, a connection to the crown’s financial interests is plain, such as a
1988 bill affecting the duchy of Lancaster, the private estate that gives the
Queen a multimillion-pound income.
Buckingham
Palace confirmed that the mechanism encompassed draft laws that affect the
Queen’s private interests, such as her private estates, as well as anything
that affects the Queen personally, whether as an individual or as a land owner
or employer.
A
spokesperson for the Queen said: “Whether Queen’s consent is required is
decided by parliament, independently from the royal household, in matters that
would affect crown interests, including personal property and personal
interests of the monarch.
“If consent
is required, draft legislation is, by convention, put to the sovereign to grant
solely on advice of ministers and as a matter of public record.”
She added:
“Queen’s consent is a parliamentary process, with the role of sovereign purely
formal. Consent is always granted by the monarch where requested by government.
Any assertion that the sovereign has blocked legislation is simply incorrect.”
The Cabinet
Office said: “Queen’s consent is a longstanding convention and a requirement of
the parliamentary process. Consent is routinely sought by the government and
agreed by the monarch as a matter of course.”
A
little-questioned rule
Many of the
laws appear to relate to matters of the royal prerogative, the powers of state
that are formally vested in the monarch but are exercised by the government.
The fact
that the consent procedure takes place is briefly noted in the parliamentary
record. In the Commons, a minister nods when asked by the Speaker, while in the
Lords a minister will read a rote passage of text.
Politicians
infrequently question the procedure. One of the rare occasions was in 2015 when
the Labour peer Lord Berkeley asked why the Queen’s consent was required for
the enterprise bill after the rote passage had been read out.
Lord
Taylor, the then government chief whip in the Lords, replied that it was “a
courtesy which Her Majesty extends to the house before we consider the third
reading of a bill. It is not normal to discuss in detail what the interests
are.”
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