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Telegraph - A whiff of Old Labour

Amid our countless public enterprises that lose money and cost the taxpayer vast sums, the Prince of Wales’s private Duchy of Cornwall is successful, enterprising and profitable. That does not prevent the Public Accounts Committee of the House of Commons, where no one is ill-paid or ill-pensioned, from casting a baleful eye over it and pronouncing it ill-run. Because it is profitable, the Prince of Wales’s income, on which he pays 40 per cent tax, has risen to £13 million a year.

The PAC objects to the Prince of Wales being chairman of an enterprise which determines his income. He should resign, they say, and why is he not paying corporation or capital gains tax? The short answer to that question is that as a private estate the ancient duchy does not attract corporation tax nor does it make capital gains.

We catch here a whiff of the old-fashioned socialism which Tony Blair has worked hard to exorcise from his party; that and an even stronger whiff of the republicanism which many in today’s Labour ranks espouse. If the Duchy of Cornwall were losing money, there might indeed be a case for the PAC to complain; but no, what they find objectionable is a well-managed private estate that makes lots of money and, they complain, is not sufficiently accountable to the public.

They overlook what courtiers rightly stress, that this is a private body, not a public agency accountable to the taxpayer. Indeed, because the Queen also draws part of her income from the duchy, it is an enterprise which is saving the taxpayer money. To his credit, the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, knows this, perceives the folly of the PAC’s position and has advised MPs to lay off the Prince of Wales. Alas, the itch of ancestral animosities has proved too strong.

The PAC is one of Parliament’s most influential committees and a valuable watchdog. It does its own standing no good in the public eye with a report so patently biased and obtuse.

So mean-spirited and bitter. It’s unbelievable.