Commons to ask crown estate for details of Prince Andrew’s rent-free housing as inquiry moves closer – UK politics live

October 23, 2025

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Commons inquiry into Prince Andrew’s rent-free housing gets closer as public accounts committee requests details of lease

Yesterday Keir Starmer told MPs that he favoured a parliamentary inquiry covering Prince Andrew’s housing arrangements at Royal Lodge – the mansion in Windsor which he leases from the crown estate on a deal that involves him paying no rent.

Today the Commons public accounts committee (PAC) said it is going to be asking the crown estate for more details of Andrew’s lease arrangements – in what would be the first step towards a full investigation.

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, the Conservative MP who chairs the committee, said:

The public accounts committee will be writing in the coming days to the crown estate commissioners and HM Treasury, seeking further information on the lease arrangements for Royal Lodge.

In the correspondence, our cross-party committee will be raising a number of questions with the crown estate and HM Treasury. This forms part of our longstanding remit, on behalf of parliament and the British public, to examine the economy, efficiency and effectiveness of public spending, and ensure the taxpayer is receiving best value for money.

Our committee has a further opportunity in 2026 to consider the annual report and accounts for the crown estate, and will make a decision on whether to undertake any work on this in the normal way. We will review the response we receive to our forthcoming correspondence, and will consider at that time whether to seek further information.

In the past the PAC has published reports looking at royal finances. But it has not taken evidence from members of the royal family directly, and Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, who wants to see Andrew summoned to parliament to face questions from MPs, is unlikely to get his wish granted any time soon.

Clifton-Brown does not really need to write to the crown estate for details of the lease; they were published in the Times on Monday evening, after the crown estate responded to a Freedom of Information request. Official bodies normally take weeks or months to respond to FoI requests. But George Greenwood, the journalist who broke the story, said he got a reply on the day – suggesting somone at the crown estate was not unhappy about the idea of this information appearing in the public domain.

The paper said:

The Times obtained a copy of the leasehold agreement for Royal Lodge, revealing the terms under which the prince lives on the 30-room estate.

It states that, while the prince paid £1m for the lease plus at least £7.5 million for refurbishments completed in 2005, he has paid “one peppercorn (if demanded)” in rent per year, since 2003.

He and his family are entitled to live in the property until 2078.

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Updated at 10.33 EDT

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AI, used well, can ‘rebuild trust in state’ and in politics, David Lammy says

The use of artificial intelligence can boost trust in the state and tackle problems with the “bloated” public sector, David Lammy said.

In a speech at OpenAI’s Frontiers conference in London this morning, the deputy PM said that the public sector had become “too expensive” and that productivity was still lagging behind pre-pandemic levels, but that AI had the potential to change that.

He said:

Governments and corporations who seize AI faster and more robustly will surge ahead and those that hesitate will fall very quickly behind.

I’m also convinced that if used well – emphasis on used well – AI can help to rebuild trust in the state, badly needed trust in our politics, delivering what people really want: shorter waits, fewer errors, lower costs and better outcomes.

He also said:

Parts of our bureaucracy have become bloated, they have become too expensive, they have become too unproductive, to the point that too often they fail to meet the needs of the people that they’re meant to serve.

And, let’s be frank, public sector productivity is still lagging, certainly behind pre-pandemic levels, and that’s not good for anybody. It’s certainly not good for the people of our country …

If we get this right, if we embed AI across government, across every system, across every service, I believe that we can rejuvenate 150 years of British state enterprise in the next 15 years, possibly even sooner.

David Lammy speaking at the OpenAI’s Frontiers Conference at St Pancras Hotel in central London this morning. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PAShare

Voting has closed in the Labour deputy leadership contest. The result will be announced on Saturday.

LabourList and Survation do regular polls of Labour members (they survey LabourList members who say they are party members, and weight the results according to what is known the composition of the Labour membership) and they have published their final deputy leadership one. It suggests Lucy Powell will beat Bridget Phillipson by 57% to 40%.

Polling on deputy leadership Photograph: LabourListShare

Conservatives complain to whips about fellow MP’s comments on legally settled people

Conservative MPs have complained to party whips after Katie Lam said many legally settled people should be deported to make the UK “culturally coherent”, the Guardian has learned. Eleni Courea and Peter Walker have the story.

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Labour and Tory thinktanks welcome affordable housing quotas being cut for London in bid to boost development

As expected, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government has confirmed that it will allow builders to qualify for fast-track planning approval if their developments contain 2% affordable housing – rather than 35%, the current minimum.

MHCLG said this was housing building in Londo “has faced significant challenges over recent years due to a combination of the legacy of the previous government, impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, high interest rates, spiralling construction costs, regulatory blockers and wider economic conditions”.

In its news release, MHCLG said:

Time-limited, emergency measures, which are subject to consultation, will unlock development by making sites more viable and incentivise developers to get spades in the ground through a fast-tracked planning process for sites with at least 20 per cent affordable housing. Targeted measures will tackle squeezed viability, including the removal of design guidance that constrains density and temporary relief from development levies for schemes able to start promptly and guarantee affordable homes for Londoners.

Today’s package will mean that more homes – including affordable homes and those for social rent – can be built and built faster. This ‘use it or lose it’ route will come with strict conditions to speed up the delivery of new homes, which if not met will require developers to share their profits with local boroughs to deliver more affordable homes.

Unusually, the announcement has been welcomed by thinktanks on the left and the right.

This is from Ben Cooper, head of the Fabian Housing Centre, the housing wing of the Labour thinktank, the Fabian Society.

The collapse of housebuilding in London is the legacy of the previous government, piling up costs on housebuilders and failing to ensure quick planning decisions. Unless this is tackled swiftly, London’s housing crisis will continue to devastate families and communities – leaving thousands trapped in temporary accommodation and many more struggling with the cost of rent or unable to buy.

That is why this package is critical to kickstart building in London over the next two years. Additional powers for the mayor will ensure that every part of London is making its contribution to tackling the housing crisis and meeting the 1.5m new homes target. The temporary reduction in the affordable housing target is a regrettable necessity, to ensure that we don’t see the delivery of affordable and social housing grind to a halt in London.

And this is from Ben Hopkinson, head of housing and infrastracture at the Centre for Policy Studies, a Conservative thinktank.

The government’s support for housebuilding in London is welcome, and the new policy paper contains some encouraging elements.

The removal of costly regulations like those requiring dual aspect and the changes to high affordability requirements, as the CPS has repeatedly called for, are especially good news.

The Centre for London also welcomed the news. Its CEO, Antonia Jennings, said:

The 35% affordable homes target for new developments is admirable, and it’s one London should strive for in the long-term.

The reality is, however, that 35% of nothing, is nothing. When no new developments are being built, there will be no new social homes.

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The Labour MP Lloyd Hatton, who has been among those pushing for a fuller inquiry into Prince Andrew, welcomeed the announcement from the public accounts committee. (See 3.31pm.)

He said:

It’s good news the public accounts committee is beginning to take a much closer look at this pressing matter. We must scrutinise any taxpayers’ money that may be linked to the Royal Lodge. The public rightly expect parliament to get to the bottom of this.

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Spending less than 8% of new fishing fund on Scotland ‘madness’, MPs told

The food minister has faced calls to explain the “ocean-going madness” of spending less than 8% of a new fishing fund on Scotland, PA Media reports. PA says:

During a Commns urgent question this morning Orkney and Shetland MP Alistair Carmichael pressed Angela Eagle to say when she planned to look again at Scotland’s £28m allocation from the £360m UK-wide package.

Scotland lands the most fish by quantity and value out of the four UK nations, according to the Government, and the Scottish fishing fleet has landed more than three-quarters of UK quota species, such as cod, haddock and herring, over recent years.

The government earlier this year set out its intention to back coastal communities with funding when negotiators struck a 12-year agreement with the EU, granting British fishing access and rights with no increase in the amount which EU vessels can catch in UK waters.

“We are working closely with our fishing and seafood sectors to ensure that they’re vibrant, profitable and sustainable alongside a healthy and productive marine environment,” Eagle told the Commons.

She said the Fishing and Coastal Growth Fund will “support the next generation of fishers and breathe new life into our coastal communities”.

Eagle continued: “This fund recognises the vital contribution that fishing and coastal communities make to our economy, local communities and national heritage. Designing this fund with stakeholders is paramount to its success, and we want to work with industry and communities to get their views on how to maximise value, and target investment for maximum local impact.”

The minister added the fund “would be devolved, providing devolved governments with full discretion of how to allocate funding and reaffirming this Government’s commitment to devolution”, with the allocations for Holyrood, Cardiff Bay and Stormont based on the Barnett Formula.

Carmichael, who chairs the Commons’ environment committee, told MPs: “Let’s not forget that this fund was created because the prime minister went and rolled over for 12 years the catastrophically bad deal that Boris Johnson gave us for five.

“If the minister is sincere when she says that the aim of the government is to maximise local investment, then to use the Barnett Formula to distribute this is ocean-going madness.”

Brendan O’Hara described the allocation as a “kick in the teeth to those fishing communities” in his Argyll, Bute and South Lochaber constituency.

Mairi Gougeon, the Scottish government’s rural affairs secretary, has previously written to Eagle, describing the allocation as “wholly unacceptable”.

Wales’s Fishing and Coastal Growth Fund allocation was £18m, with Northern Ireland set to receive £10m.