Budget 2010: Even the Queen feels pinch in £200,000 cuts
THE Queen is to cut her spending by £200,000 this year and has imposed a pay freeze on her senior staff as Buckingham Palace shares Britain’s economic pain.
A recruitment freeze is also under consideration at the palace, where staff numbers have risen by 15 to 300 in a decade. Staff leaving are unlikely to be replaced. “They are going to look at every post,” a senior courtier said.
The Queen is under pressure to rein in her costs after a 4.9 per cent rise in her spending in the past year from £14.4 million to £15.1million, partly caused by a £400,000 contribution to help fill a £1million black hole in pension provision for her aides. Her finance chief, Sir Alan Reid, Keeper of the Privy Purse, earns £180,000 a year and her Private Secretary, Christopher Geidt, is paid £146,000.
The details came in a report by the Royal Trustees into a decade of Civil List spending. Both earn more than PM David Cameron – salary £142,500.
In 2011 palace spending will fall back to £14.9million, a 1.3 per cent drop, after the Government announced yesterday that the Civil List will be frozen at £7.9million for another year.
