Queen Mother's expenses sparked row with Treasury

Memos from the 1960s reveal Tory government balked at paying for royal haircuts and clothes

The expensive requirements of Queen Elizabeth the the Queen Mother for an official visit on the Royal Yacht Britannia provoked a bitter wrangle with Whitehall over who should foot the bill.

The expectation that the Government would pay for a 14-strong Royal Marines band and the Queen Mother's food and drink during a two-day visit to Tunisia in 1961 caused a fractious exchange, as described in official documents released today at the Public Record Office in Kew. In the following year, the Foreign Office also queried the scale of the Queen Mother's expenditure on clothes for another overseas engagement.

In March 1961, the Queen Mother's private office submitted an invoice of £2,483 to the Treasury for the visit to North Africa, including a daily allowance of £2 0s 6d for every member of the Royal Marines band, £400 for catering and £50 for a hairdresser.

The Government balked at the payment for the bandsmen, known as the Board of Green Cloth Allowance, which was introduced after Queen Victoria stopped asking Britannia's crew to dine with her in the 19th century.

The Treasury said the allowance was unnecessary because "officers on board the yacht had a good time".

The report, copied to the Foreign Office because it was meeting the overall cost of the visit, said the Treasury was not prepared to pay for the Queen Mother's private dinners.

It noted: "There would be considerable public criticism if it became known that the cost of food and drinks was being met from public funds. Expenditure of this sort should be regarded as essentially personal and should be met from the Civil List."

Whitehall's reluctance to pay drew a frosty response from Clarence House, suggesting that the perceived parsimony had provoked anger at the very top.A scribbled note from Sir Ralph Anstruther, treasurer to the Queen Mother, reveals that she told her staff to make the point that she had only embarked on the trip to Tunisia as a favour to the Government and would rather have travelled by plane.

Another Treasury memo recorded how Sir Ralph passed on the royal discontent. "He pointed out that Queen Mother had not been anxious to make the visit at all but had been persuaded to do it by the Foreign Secretary.

"Having agreed to go, she did not want to go by sea but she had gone by the Royal Yacht since the vessel was going there in any case. Had the Queen Mother gone as she preferred, by aeroplane, the cost might have been of the order of £3,000 and £3,500."

The documents also reveal discontent in the Admiralty at the cost of Britannia, pointing that as well as paying for its maintenance, the Royal Navy made a "heavy contribution to each and every visit made in the yacht, for example, fuel".

The row was resolved when Buckingham Palace agreed to meet the bill for the band and royal food out of its resources. The backdown appears to have caused a change of attitude in at least one Treasury accountant. When the Foreign Office queried the projected cost of the haute couture required by the Queen Mother for a visit to Canada in the summer of 1962, it was met by the following reminder of royal etiquette from a senior Treasury official.

"The sum of £1,500 for Her Majesty's clothing represent two or three Hartnell evening dresses and does not cover the cost of a complete outfit. A Royal Lady cannot appear in the same dress on more than one occasion during a tour."