EVERY British citizen contributes 66p a year to pay for the Royal Family's annual running costs of £40 million, it was revealed yesterday.
But despite a £2 million rise on the previous year, the Queen's main residence, Buckingham Palace, is riddled with asbestos and has not been rewired for more than 50 years.
The annual publication of the royal finances, for 2007-8, reveals that £6
00,000 of the £2 million extra cost – an extra 4p per British citizen – is a result of more foreign trips, particularly by Prince Andrew.
The Duke of York made 12 overseas journeys, costing nearly £800,000 – almost double the cost of the previous year, when he went abroad on seven occasions. This is said to be a result of his increased workload as an ambassador for British business.
Members of the Royal Family travel abroad at the request of the Foreign Office or its offshoot quango, UK Trade and Investment.
Palace officials are adamant that the royals remain good value for money for the nation, saying the 66p annual cost is less than two pints of milk, or the price of a single musical download for an iPod.
But they have warned that a £32 million black hole will emerge in the next decade because the government is freezing its £15 million annual grant for the upkeep of royal palaces. Aides have calculated that it will cost an extra £4 million a year from 2011 for repairs.
A palace source said that requests to the Department of Culture for increased funding to deal with the backlog of maintenance work had "fallen on deaf ears". The source said: "Given the experience we've had in the past ten years, we cannot be optimistic. We haven't received anything, despite putting forward what we thought was persuasive claims for the money."
Sir Alan Reid, who earns £187,000 as Keeper of the Privy Purse, said that officials had paid "continuous attention to obtaining value for money".
The Royal Family's travel bill totalled £6.2 million, of which £900,000 went on rail travel. Only 19 journeys were made on the royal train, and 27 nights were spent on board. The Duke of York's excursions included a two-week trip to Singapore and India that cost almost £250,000, a week-long visit to Brazil (£77,000) and a week in Tokyo and Beijing (£19,453).
The most expensive trip was the £381,813 for a charter flight to take the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh to the United States for a six-day state visit.
During that trip, they hired a helicopter, at a cost of £22,849, to take them to the Kentucky Derby.
A luxury yacht chartered for the Prince of Wales for a visit to the Caribbean in March cost £210,000.
Prince Charles also took a three-day trip on the royal train from Aberdeen to Euston, via Liverpool, that cost £40,513, while a four-day trip from Mid-Glamorgan, via Bangor, Powys and Welshpool, to Kemble station, near Highgrove, cost £43,258. Taking the train from Ayr to Euston overnight last October with his wife, the Duchess of Cornwall, came to £23,949.
During the year, the Queen made state visits to the United States and Uganda, and hosted state visits from the president of Ghana and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.
The Palace of Holyroodhouse, in Edinburgh, cost £1.1 million to run in the last financial year, down £200,000 on the previous 12 months.
It is likely to cost £2.4 million to rewire and install new plumbing at Buckingham Palace due to the presence of potentially lethal asbestos. Palace staff are not at risk as long as the asbestos is not disturbed.
Yesterday's figures exclude security costs and those related to ceremonial duties performed by the armed forces.
The full article contains 657 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
