Prince Andrew should face MPs over Royal Lodge lease, says Davey

Prince Andrew should be called in front of MPs to give evidence about his lease of Royal Lodge, Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey has said.

It follows calls for greater transparency into royal finances and the independently-run Crown Estate, which leased Andrew his mansion in Windsor.

Sir Ed called for a select committee inquiry to "properly scrutinise" the Crown Estate, with Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer replying that it was important there was proper scrutiny of all Crown properties.

Buckingham Palace has been contacted for comment.

While there is nothing preventing a House of Commons committee from inviting Prince Andrew to give evidence, an appearance in such a setting by a member of the Royal Family would be unprecedented. It is unclear whether the committee would be able to compel him to do so.

There has been increased focus on Prince Andrew - who had already stepped back as a working royal - after he relinquished his titles last week following growing pressure over his links with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Sir Ed's question came after a document seen by BBC News confirmed the arrangement for the Royal Lodge means that the prince has only ever paid a token annual rent on property, and that it might not be required under his deal with the Crown Estate.

The deal meant that, instead of paying annual rent, Prince Andrew made large lump sum payments upfront, including for renovations.

In effect, those payments - which totalled about £8m - meant he was buying himself out of future rent obligations for the duration of the 75-year lease.

Part of the deal was that if he left early in the lease he could reclaim some of the money he had paid upfront, with that amount tapering down over time until 25 years - at the current rate, it is about £186,000 for each remaining year until 2028.

Former Crown Estate commissioner Lord Curry told BBC Radio 5 Live's Matt Chorley the estate would be "honour bound to honour that lease" and that any inquiry would be a "waste of time and money".

"There's nothing they can do about the lease without reneging on its terms, and that would be inappropriate," he said.

The Crown Estate is a property business owned by the monarch but run independently, with profits from it going to the Treasury. The level of profit is used as a benchmark to calculate the funding given by the government to the Royal Family in the Sovereign Grant.

Baroness Margaret Hodge, who chaired the Public Accounts Committee between 2010 and 2015, said the Royal Lodge arrangement "looks like a rotten deal".

"The Royal Lodge is run by the Crown Estate [which] is under a duty to maximise the income it collects because that goes to the taxpayer," she told BBC Radio 4's Today programme on Wednesday.

She also made a call for greater transparency regarding royal finances generally.

"We don't know," she underlined, "there's no transparency - so inevitably we're sceptical and we ask questions".

"All we've got here is another specific issue which is an example of a much much wider problem which is that the royal finances are mired in secrecy and that lack of transparency associated with those finances ends up with us asking all sorts of questions."

The Royal Family has three main funding streams in addition to private income.

The Sovereign Grant is funded by the taxpayer while the Duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall provide income for the King and the Prince of Wales respectively.

Annual financial statements from the Royal Family include details on the Sovereign Grant - which funds official duties, the maintenance of the Occupied Royal Palaces and more recently has funded the Buckingham Palace Reservicing Programme.

Separate reports are published for the two duchies which are described on their respective websites as private estates.

Baroness Hodge said: "There is this muddy territory [...] in my view, they are public because they were given by the State to the Royal Family for the purpose of sustaining themselves."

The Duchy of Cornwall's official site said the Prince of Wales pays income tax on this income - which is not a requirement, but something he does voluntarily.

The King also voluntarily pays income tax on the Duchy of Lancaster.

The King ended financial support for Prince Andrew last year as he faced increasing public scrutiny over his links with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The prince announced he would stop using his Duke of York title earlier this month – however York MP Rachael Maskell, who had the Labour whip suspended in July, is introducing a proposal to the House of Commons on Wednesday for a new law which would enable the King to remove titles.

This proposal would give the King the power to formally strip the prince of the dukedom.

The Removal of Titles Bill was already introduced in parliament in 2022 and would require the support of government to become law.

This week has also seen the publication of the posthumous memoir of Virginia Giuffre, who alleged that Prince Andrew had sex with her at Ghislaine Maxwell's house when she was 17. Andrew has always denied the allegations.

Separately, in the US, a senior member of the US House Oversight Committee Stephen Lynch told the BBC's Newsnight the committee "would be extremely interested in hearing from Prince Andrew regarding his involvement in all of this".

The committee has been considering documents from the Epstein case and releasing certain documents to the public in recent months.

Asked whether he would issue that invitation, Mr Lynch responded: "We will I'm sure."

One of Epstein's accusers, Annie Farmer, told Newsnight separately that she is not "holding [her] breath" that Prince Andrew would share further information with the authorities.

However, she added: "This is a moment. If he wants to do right by Virginia and the rest of us, he could do something different and say, I have information I want to share because I believe it could be helpful."