THE GOVERNMENT'S penny-pinching treatment of the Queen is in sharp contrast with lavish expenditure on MPs: their offices in the new building at Westminster (Portcullis House) will cost over pounds 1m for each MP. For years the Queen has been economising. She carries out between 500 and 600 public duties a year and her Civil List money goes towards funding her role as Head of State and Head of the Commonwealth: this money is only obtained in exchange for valuable taxation income and hereditary revenues given up by George III, of which the Crown Estate alone paid pounds 113.2m into the Treasury last year.
JENNIFER MILLER
London SW15
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