Orders of the Day — Civil List Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 15 July 1952.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Captain Harry Crookshank Captain Harry Crookshank , Gainsborough 12:00, 15 July 1952

I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read a Second time."

The Bill, as hon. and right hon. Members know, is founded on the Resolutions which were discussed last week for a very considerable time and in very great detail. I do not think that it is necessary for me, in moving the Second Reading of the Bill, to cover all that ground again today. The facts are well known. The Bill gives the increases set out in the Schedule, and there is available to all who wish to study the matter the Report of the Select Committee. I think, therefore, I can best serve the purpose of the debate by saying a few words on matters of detail which appear in the Bill, and to which, I think, the attention of the House should specifically be drawn.

The first point arises out of the third paragraph of the Preamble to the Bill. The opening phrase of the paragraph on the second page is: … forasmuch as it is happily to be expected that Your Majesty's reign will last for many years, … That is a pleasant echo of the words: Happy and glorious,Long to reign over us. The remainder of that paragraph applies to certain new supplementary provisions with which I want to deal shortly.

In paragraph 17 of the Select Committee's Report on the Civil List, we draw attention to one particular respect in which this Civil List and its proposals will represent a departure—and perhaps a departure of real substance from all the precedents. Perhaps I may be allowed to put it shortly in this way. Hitherto there has always been a kind of compensating relationship between Class I of the Civil List, that is, the Privy Purse, and Classes II and III, which are the salaries and expenses of the Household.

What has happened in the past has been that if Classes II and III, that is, the salaries and expenses of the Household, have shown a deficit in any particular year, as, in fact, they did—those who wish to see it will find it in the Appendix to the Select Committee's Report—during the last six years of the last reign it was the practice for that deficit to be made good from Class I, that is, from the Sovereign's own Privy Purse; and conversely, if Classes II and III have shown a saving, as they did in the first nine years of the last reign, that saving was passed automatically to the Privy Purse to be disposed of at the Sovereign's discretion.

As I say, both happened in the last reign. There were deficits on the one and savings on the other. Those savings arose out of not spending the full total of Classes II and III, and they have in the past proved to be a very convenient way by which the Sovereign could make some provision for those members of his family, particularly the grandchildren, for whom Parliament had not made specific provision because, among other reasons, all the future cannot be foreseen.

It is that precedent which this Civil List alters. We are saying—and this is referred to in the Preamble—that, given the uncertainties of what we all trust will be a very long and happy reign, it is no longer reasonable to expect the Privy Purse to make good the deficits which may arise, as they have done in recent years, on Classes II and III of the Civil List. Therefore, we propose in the Bill, as will be seen in the Schedule, to include in the Civil List itself a margin for contingencies. That is described in the Schedule as Class V, Supplementary provision.

But we are saying something more than that. We are saying that if the Privy Purse has not to make good the deficits, if it should be insulated from the effects of these deficits, then it should no longer also receive the savings. It cuts both ways, if I may use a colloquial phrase. Therefore, any saving that may occur on Classes II or III or, indeed, any savings on the contingencies margin itself should not automatically go to the Privy Purse but should be transferred to the Royal Trustees to be applied by them to meet any deficits in a manner which I will explain.

The result of all this is that it is quite possible that at the end of the reign, as the result of this arrangement, the Trustees may find themselves holding considerable sums of money. The question, therefore, is: What is to be done with these accumulated sums, should there be any? Clearly, that is not a question which we here today ought to attempt to answer. I think that the Select Committee was quite right when, in its Report, it said that this must be left for Parliament to decide.

Paragraph 17 of the Report says that the question is for: … Parliament to decide as part of the arrangements connected with the Civil List provision for the next reign in the light of all the circumstances of the time. It follows from what I have said that what money the Royal Trustees would then be holding would, in effect, be money which, if we had followed previous precedents, would have passed to Class I, and, therefore, Class I would have been available to the Sovereign as a means of providing for other members of the Royal Family, particularly her grandchildren. Although we are not, in Tact, following that precedent, for what I think are good and sufficient reasons, it will be for Parliament at the beginning of the next reign, when it comes to consider the Civil List for that monarch, to consider very carefully the disposition of the moneys then held by the Royal Trustees.

I thought it was worth saying that, in order that it might be on the record of Parliament as being what is today the intention of Her Majesty's Government in putting forward these provisions, which have the full support of the Select Committee.

As to the Bill itself, I do not think I need trouble to refer to any of the first eight Clauses, because they merely put into greater detail and into legislative form the Resolutions which we have already discussed. They deal with the various financial provisions of the Civil List itself. Clause 8 is the normal charging provision.