Pressure mounts on Prince Andrew over Windsor Royal Lodge
Pressure is mounting for Prince Andrew to give up his Windsor estate and “start living privately”, with a group of MPs calling on the government to formally remove him from the dukedom.
Shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick said the public was “sick” with the disgraced royal after it was revealed he had been paying just a speck of rent on his 30-room mansion for more than 20 years.
Andrew announced that he would give up using his royal titles amid renewed focus on his connections to Jeffrey Epstein. The prince vehemently denies these claims, according to Virginia Giuffre, who wrote her memoirs after his death. Nobody’s Daughter It was officially released on Tuesday that she was forced to have sex with him three times after being kidnapped by the billionaire financier.
“He has embarrassed the royal family time and time again,” Mr Jenrick said, adding that Andrew had behaved “disgracefully”.
“He must now leave public life for good, stop receiving any taxpayer assistance and go and live a completely private life. The public is fed up with Prince Andrew and the damage he is doing to the reputation of our royal family and this country.”
Meanwhile, SNP MPs at Westminster have tabled an early day motion calling for “the government to take legal steps to remove the dukedom awarded to Prince Andrew”.
Andrew and his family have a 75-year lease on the 30-bedroom Royal Lodge in Windsor, which allows them to live on the property until 2078. The latest revelation will put pressure on the scandal-ridden royal to give up Royal Lodge, which sits on 98 acres in Windsor Great Park and is leased from the royal estate.
Details of the lease show that Andrew signed a 75-year lease in 2003. He paid £1 million for the rent and beyond that the rent was set at a “pepper” if requested.
The agreement also includes a clause stating that the royal estate will have to pay Andrew around £558,000 if he reneges on the lease.
Treasury committee chair Dame Meg Hillier told BBC Radio 4: “Where money is flowing and particularly where taxpayers’ money or taxpayers’ interests are involved, parliament has a responsibility to shine a light on that and we need answers.”
Independent He understands that the Treasury committee currently has no plans to undertake a study of the Royal Lodge.
No 10 said on Tuesday it was up to the public spending watchdog whether the lease would be re-examined.
A Downing Street spokesman said: “The National Audit Office examined the Royal Lodge’s tenancy arrangements in 2005. And in its report published at the time, it concluded that the royal estate did not have any specific procedures in place when negotiating deals with the royal family.
“An independent review concluded that the transaction with Prince Andrew and the Royal Lodge was appropriate.”
Another parliamentary group, the public accounts committee, also said: Independent He said the lease was a matter of policy for the royal family and the committee accepted that “these arrangements were accurately disclosed to the National Audit Office as part of its annual and most recent audit of the royal property accounts”.
A spokesman for the committee said the spending watchdog NAO would “look at the annual report and accounts of the crown estate for the next financial year” as part of its regular work.
Under the terms of the Royal Lodge lease, Andrew must ensure that the mansion’s exterior is repainted with two coats of paint every five years and that the exterior stone and cement work is cleaned and repainted.
He also has to repaint the interior with two coats of paint every seven years.
The prince must also “decorate the interior of the seven-bedroom house with paper polish” and behave respectfully.
The Liberal Democrats called on Andrew to “show some remorse by refunding every penny of the rent he didn’t pay while humiliating his office”.
The party’s cabinet spokeswoman, Lisa Smart, said: “The longer this sad story goes on, the more insulting and increasingly embarrassing his presence in public life becomes.”
Also following Giuffre’s memoirs, Giuffre’s brother and sister-in-law Sky and Amanda Roberts called on the police watchdog to reconsider the Metropolitan Police’s decision not to continue investigations into the allegations against Andrew.
They called on the force to reopen the investigation into allegations that Giuffre was forced to have sex with the royal when she was 17, adding that they thought the Independent Office for Police Conduct should review the decision if police failed to act.
