December 04, 2002
Prince's wedding-ring note widens palace inquiry
By Andrew Pierce
THE emergence yesterday of a note from the Prince of Wales, which offers his staff the chance of a “very good gold wedding ring”, is the first written evidence that senior members of the Royal Household are involved in the lucrative sale of private gifts.
The disclosure of the note, scrawled on the back of an old envelope, will intensify demands for a proper independent inquiry into the royal-gifts-for-sale practice endemic within the Royal Household.
The swift agreement of St James’s Palace, after questions from The Times, to extend the investigation to cover the fallout from the collapse of the Harold Brown case will increase pressure for similar transparency on the Crown Prosecution Service and the Director of Public Prosecutions, who authorised the trial to go ahead despite the collapse of the Paul Burrell case.
St James’s Palace was at pains yesterday to say that it had never denied that senior members of the Royal Family, including the Prince of Wales, regularly gave their employees expensive gifts.
The Harold Brown prosecution team was told as much more than two years ago and the witness statement from Mr Burrell, butler to Diana, Princess of Wales, made the same point. The information given by St James’s Palace to the prosecution was that the Prince regularly gave champagne and polo prizes to staff.
However, few gold wedding rings are given as prizes in polo.
The Peat Inquiry, which is being assisted by Edmund Lawson, QC, will look at the flourishing grey market in royal artefacts, which has included chairs used at the investiture of the Prince of Wales, menus from the Queen’s Flight, books given to the late Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother by her grandchildren, and wrought-iron chairs from the garden at Highgrove.
They were sold through upmarket jewellers, on the internet and through newspaper advertisements. The Prince of Wales has himself benefited by more than £100,000 a year from the sale of gifts no longer wanted or loathed in the first place. They were sold on his behalf by Michael Fawcett, one of his closest advisers, who kept about 20 per cent from the sales, earning him the nickname Fawcett the Fence.
Mr Fawcett remains a paid and trusted member of the Prince of Wales’s most intimate circle of advisers.
The existence of the envelope suggests that the largesse over royal gifts extends to all 85 of the Prince’s employees.
Sir Michael, in a series of interviews when he announced last month the establishment of his inquiry, admitted that the rules distinguishing between public and private gifts had become “blurred”.
Guidelines at the palaces, which have been in existence for years, state that official gifts given during engagements have to be catalogued, displayed, put on loan or in storage. They are not subject to tax because they belong to the nation.
Private gifts are barred to members of the Royal Family if they are cash or of a commercial nature. However, as with any private individual, private gifts can be disposed of in whatever way they regard as appropriate. The wedding gifts of the Prince and Princess of Wales, which were numbered in their hundreds, were regarded as private, even if they came from heads of state. Staff members are entitled to gifts: they are logged if they are valued at more than £50.
Mr Brown, a servant of Diana, Princess of Wales, had been selling off her unwanted treasures for years. Unlike the Prince, she never paid commission, but was generous with gifts as Mr Burrell was able to testify successfully in court.
The Peat report could well bring an end in the new year to the lucrative gravy train that has been a big earner for royal retainers, who are badly paid, although many live in cut-price accommodation.
The fallout from the collapse of the latest butler trial will be more limited than the aftermath of the Burrell case.
Mr Brown, who remains a favoured servant of the Royal Family as butler to Viscount Linley, the son of the late Princess Margaret, whom he served after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, will never sell his story. Not while he remains a fully-paid-up member of “the Firm”.
Link:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-...-502016,00.html