‘Obscene’:
Anger after cost of King Charles’s coronation revealed
Official
figures put price of event at £72m but anti-monarchy group Republic says real
cost is likely much more
Donna
Ferguson
Thu 21 Nov
2024 21.57 GMT
The
coronation of King Charles in May 2023 cost taxpayers at least £72m, official
figures have revealed.
The cost of
policing the ceremony was £21.7m, with a further £50.3m in costs racked up by
the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
About 20
million people in Britain watched Charles crowned at Westminster Abbey on TV,
substantially fewer than the 29 million Britons who had watched the funeral of
Queen Elizabeth II in 2022.
The
coronation ceremony was attended by dignitaries from around the world, and a
star-studded concert took place at Windsor Castle the following night.
The annual
report and accounts of DCMS, the lead department in Rishi Sunak’s government
that worked with the royal household on the coronation, stated that the
department “successfully delivered on the central weekend of His Majesty King
Charles III’s coronation, enjoyed by many millions both in the UK and across
the globe”.
It described
the coronation as a “once-in-a-generation moment” that enabled the “entire
country to come together in celebration”, as well as offering “a unique
opportunity to celebrate and strengthen our national identity and showcase the
UK to the world”.
Republic,
which campaigns to replace the monarchy with an elected head of state and more
democratic political system, described the coronation as an “obscene” waste of
taxpayers’ money.
“I would be
very surprised if £72m was the whole cost,” the Republic CEO, Graham Smith,
told the Guardian.
As well as
the Home Office policing and DCMS costs included in the figures, he said the
Ministry of Defence, Transport for London, fire brigades and local councils
also incurred costs related to the coronation, with other estimates putting the
totalspend at between £100m and £250m.
“But even
that kind of money – £72m – is incredible,” Smith added. “It’s a huge amount of
money to spend on one person’s parade when there was no obligation whatsoever
in the constitution or in law to have a coronation, and when we were facing
cuts to essential services.
“It was a
parade that Charles insisted on at huge expense to the taxpayer, and this is on
top of the huge inheritance tax bill he didn’t [have to] pay, on top of the
£500m-a-year cost of the monarchy.”
Under a
clause agreed in 1993 by the then prime minister, John Major, any inheritance
passed “sovereign to sovereign” avoids the 40% levy applied to assets valued at
more than £325,000.
Smith added:
“It was an extravagance we simply didn’t have to have. It was completely
unnecessary and a waste of money in the middle of a cost of living crisis in a
country that is facing huge amounts of child poverty.
“When kids
are unable to afford lunches at school, to spend over £70m on this parade is
obscene.”
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