London:
Queen Elizabeth II will not get a penny more. The amount of funds the Queen gets from the British taxpayer to run her household will be frozen at 7.9 million pounds, Chancellor George Osborne said delivering his first Budget statement to the House of Commons.
Osborne's budget which contained the toughest cuts for decades states that the payment to the Buckingham Palace has been frozen at 7.9 million pounds for the last 20 years and will remain frozen for the coming year.
He said the freeze was made with the monarch's full agreement.
The amount provided by the Civil List has stayed unchanged for 20 years. It is now worth a quarter of what it was, he said.
"This has required careful management. Because of inflation, the annual payment is today worth only a quarter of what it was 20 years ago.
"I can announce that with the full agreement of the Queen, the Civil List will remain frozen at 7.9 million pounds for the coming year and I will propose a new means of consolidated support for her Majesty for the future at a later date," he was quoted as saying by BBC.
He also said that the royal households have agreed that in future, Civil List spending will come under the same audit scrutiny as other government expenditure through the National Audit Office and the Commons Public Accounts Committee.
The Civil List pays for staff costs and running expenses of the Queen's household and is set every 10 years. A revised figure was due this year.
About 70 per cent of the funding is used to pay staff salaries. The money is also used to help fund official functions such as garden parties, receptions and entertainment during state visits.
In his budget, Osborne increased VAT from 17.5 per cent to 20 per cent as he announced the biggest package of tax increases and spending cuts in a generation. He said his "tough but fair" budget is "unavoidable".