Budget 2010: The Queen accepts another funding freeze

The Queen has accepted a funding freeze for another year, George Osborne announced in the budget. He also postponed a decision on the 10-year funding settlement in the civil list (the money the state gives the Queen to carry out her duties) for another year. The Queen has not had a rise in funding for 20 years. Her £7.9m annual budget is now worth a quarter of its value in 1990, when it was set. There have been reports that the Queen's office was requesting extra money for the upkeep of her palaces. Osborne also announced that the civil list will in future be subject to scrutiny via the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee . The Queen's accounts, published yesterday, reveal a £1.2m bill to the taxpayer for catering and hospitality services in 2009. Of this, £700,000 was spent on garden parties and a further £500,000 went on food and kitchens. The figures, published in the once-a-decade Report of the Royal Trustees, showed annual expenditure on food and entertaining rose £400,000 over the past eight years. The Queen entertains nearly 50,000 people each year. Sir Alan Reid, the keeper of the privy purse and royal finances, was shown to have been paid £180,000 in 2009-10 and the private secretary to the Queen, Christopher Geidt, earned £146,000 last year.