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Politics of the United Kingdom B‑class Low‑importance

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Is "alienation" the right word for the linked last word in the first sentence of the History section? BenB4 05:57, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

In my opinion, yes. It is a term often used for the granting away of Crown lands. I can't immediately think of a clearer one, but am all attention if you can. Tim Riley 15:11, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

The annotation for "native mussels and oysters" concerns "crustaceans." Is this a case of incredibly convoluted British terminology, in which rights pertaining to the harvesting of lobsters, crabs and shrimp are titled as oystering rights, or did the author mistakenly type "crustaceans" rather than "molluscs?"Ecohansen (talk) 01:55, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

revoke?

The latest change is this addition (footnote omitted):

it was not until 1830 that King William IV revoked the income from the crown estates in Scotland.

What does revoked mean here? Income isn't obviously something one can revoke; the nearest thing to a clear meaning that I can find is "William undid a predecessor's grant of the income", but is that what happened? —Tamfang (talk) 20:50, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Ownership

I couldn't understand anything from the article. Who owns the crown estate? If it's a corporation who owns the corporation?--95.10.149.81 (talk) 15:45, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

The Crown Estates do not belong to the monarch they belong to the UK state. I'll edit the article as appropriate Noel darlow (talk) 20:46, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

The Crown Estate is owned by the Sovereign (constitutionally, the sovereign is the human embodiment of the crown, thus the Sovereign "as such, is regarded as the personification of the state"; what is known as 'state lands' or 'the state' is known as 'crown lands' or 'the crown' in constitutional monarchies such as the UK and other Commonwealth Realms).

1. "The Sovereign is the legal owner but does not have any powers of management or control" The Crown Estate
2. "The Crown Estate belongs to the reigning monarch 'in right of The Crown', that is, it is owned by the monarch for the duration of their reign, by virtue of their accession to the throne" The Crown Estate
3. "The Crown Estate is the property of the sovereign. But, on accession, every monarch since George III (in 1760) has agreed to surrender the surplus revenues of the Crown Estate to the Exchequer, in return for annual grant support" HM Treasury (Government of the United Kingdom)
4. "The Crown Estate is the property of the Sovereign “in right of the Crown”."Government of the United Kingdom
5. "the Estate is part of the hereditary possessions of the sovereign; while its income forms part of Her hereditary revenues and is paid direct into the Consolidated Fund”;12 the CEC explained that they exercise 'the powers of ownership, although we are not owners in our own right.'13 This quote does provide some greater clarity as many of the submissions we received thought the CEC were the owners of the Crown Estate rather than the managers of it." House of Commons Treasury Committee
6. "in effect Crown Lands are a trust estate, of which the capital belongs to the Sovereign. The income after meeting costs of upkeep has been surrendered to Parliament at the beginning of each reign since that of King George III, in accordance with a Civil List Act.18 and that, in sum, 'the Crown Estate is the Sovereign’s public estate by right of the Crown and when Parliament assumed responsibility for providing funds for the upkeep of the Royal household as well as for the expenses of Government the surrender of the revenue for the lifetime of the Sovereign was regarded as a corollary.'19"House of Commons Treasury Committee
7. "The Crown Estate is the property of the Sovereign “in right of the Crown”, though its revenue is surrendered to the Exchequer in return for government support. This exchange has been made on the accession of each sovereign since George III in 1760." The Sovereign Grant Act, 2011 (United Kingdom Legislative Law)
8. "Her Majesty desires that the hereditary revenues of the Crown, for any period for which support is provided to any of Her successors, should be at the dispoal of the House of Commons".Gracious message from the Queen to the House of Commons on the subject of the Sovereign Grant as part of the 2011 Act

So, quite clearly the Crown Estate belongs to the Queen and is her "public estate" which belongs to her by virtue of her inherited position as sovereign of the UK. This differs from her "private/privy" estate which belongs to her by virtue of her personal family inheritance. Both these estates together generate the "hereditary revenues" of the Queen (private family estate and positional estate). Due to the nature of constitutional monarchy in the British sense, the sovereign voluntarily places some of her "hereditary revenues" "at the disposal of the house of commons, an arrangement which can be agreed to by future monarchs simply by an order in council UK Parliamentary backgrounder page 4. Thus, the "public estate" that she inherited by virtue of her position as the Crown and the human embodiment of the state is entrusted for management to Her Majesty's Government. Her "personal estate" belongs to Elizabeth II independent of her inherited position of Queen and is thus managed internally.

This is why the Queen's official "expenses met by the government in return for the surrender by the Sovereign of the hereditary revenues of the Crown (mainly the profit from the Crown Estate)."gov.uk Which is to say, all expenditures she makes due to her obligation as Queen are met by her "public estate", and all other expenditures she makes in her personal capacity are made by her "personal estate". As we can see in ref just above, which was prepared for MPs by Parliament, such a surrender of management and profits from her "public estate" still must be made by every incoming sovereign and as such, ownership of the estate continues to be vested in the sovereign, but management and profits have been delegated to Her Majesty's Government. The distinction is that the Crown Estate belongs to the office of the Sovereign (the Crown) but not personally to Elizabeth II as a private individual herself, in the same way as the Catholic Church belongs to the office of the Pope but not personally to the office's holder (corporation sole). This is to ensure that the powers and properties of an office remain with the office, and don't depart with the individual leaving (which prevents the President of the United States leaving office but maintaining ownership of the White House for example), which is to say that the Crown Estate and the Royal Palaces, etc are owned by the Queen of the United Kingdom and not by Elizabeth II herself, so in the hypothetical scenario of an abdication right at this instant, the Crown Estate would immediately and automatically pass to her successor, in this case ownership being immediately vested in her son as King of the UK. trackratte (talk) 00:45, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

First, thanks for joining the article Talk. We should try to iron out whatever disagreements we have here before deciding what changes ought to be made to the article.

Many of the references which you cite create a misleading impression of the true state of affairs and I think we do mostly agree about that. The Crown Estates do not belong to the monarch in any meaningful sense. The monarch has no power to direct the management of these properties. The monarch does not receive any portion of the income generated by them nor is the monarch responsible for any of their debts. The monarch cannot dispose of Crown Estate properties. It does seem a little absurd to talk about each new monarch giving their consent to manage these properties for the benefit of the state because in practice they would have no ability to withhold permission.

The opening paragraph ought to serve as a quick reference which gives a reasonably clear and simple explanation of the Crown Estate. It may be worth exploring the legal technicalities, traditions and general flummery surrounding the monarch's present-day (non-)involvement but it's too much for the opening paragraph where we need to be reasonably concise. If we are making statements which immediately have to be deconstructed and explained in order to avoid creating a misleading impression for the readership, well, that ought to set off some alarm bells..? Noel darlow (talk) 22:46, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

1. Noel, your accusation of editwarring is unfounded, as I have undone your wholesale removal of verifiable information once only to continue to add facts and their corresponding sources, and such a procedure is inline with Misplaced Pages Policy regarding what to do when such a thing occurs. However, your wholesale reversions twice now of verifiable content and its substitution with non-verifiable information, including statements which are simply counterfactual (ie plain wrong) according to the sources you've just removed, is approaching it.
2. To respond to your first point, the sources cited are from the Crown Estate itself, the House of Commons, the Treasury and the Government of the UK, House of Commons committees, and Buckingham Palace, amongst others. They are the definitive sources for explaining how the Crown Estate functions within the United Kingdom's governing framework. Your unsourced impression of the "true state of affairs" is currently unsourced conjecture based on your own personal opinion. As an aside, when I first encountered this article, it seemed at odds with constitutional law and theory, however I had no opinion oncesover in it. It is only a couple of years later that I've finally had time to do some rudimentary fact checking that I found this article to be lacking in verifiability and presenting information which is actually directly opposite of what the weight of official and verifiable sources state.
3. To respond to your second point, the statement that "The Crown Estates do not belong to the monarch" is wrong, full stop, and has no basis in current practice or law. The powers to manage the Crown Estate are vested in the sovereign, and the profits from the estate are also vested in the sovereign. This is why Queen's consent was sought and attained placing these hereditary revenues under the management of the House of Commons from the Queen. This is also why the latest Act still requires consent by every incoming monarch to continue the current status of affairs. So yes, under the current arrangement between the sovereign and HM Gov, the monarchy does not manage the Estate, but this does not bind future monarchs (and yes, there would be a large political cost to pay in changing this arrangement, but there is no legal barrier from doing so). Also, your statement that "The monarch does not receive any portion of the income generated" by the estate is also simply false. The sovereign receives a percentage of profits of the Crown Estate under the Sovereign Grant.
4. To address your third point, I agree the opening paragraph should serve as a quick, verifiable, reference, however at present it fails to do so as it presents a series of unverifiable facts and plain fallacies.
5. I purposefully did not edit the article in one go, but incrementally over 14 edits so other edits can follow each edit and its reasoning, and collaboratively improve the article. Subsequently, wholesale reversion without any explanation beyond it not suiting an editor's POV is not productive, it is POV. And your accusations that the sources of the Crown Estate, the government of the UK, the treasury, and the House of Commons Finance Committee, etc are misleading is further evidence of your POV pushing in rejecting official, verifiable, and legal sources.
6. Your wholesale removal of over ten (nearly all) verifiable sources from the article lead, and continued assertion that the Crown Estate is not the property of the sovereign (despite all of the sources clearly stating that "Crown Estate belongs to the reigning monarch") is disruptive. Further, beyond your not liking what the sources say, it is not clear to me what your objection is and what supports such an objection as you have not pointed to a single specific. Instead of knee-jerk removal of facts and their corresponding inline citations which harms Misplaced Pages by degrading its reliability as a reference source, I suggest you work collaboratively for the article's improvement. For example, feel free to copy edit to improve the article's readability. If there is a specific point which you find lacking, or a specific source you find lacking, bring it up here. However, at present, the understanding that the Crown Estate belongs to the sovereign but under current arrangements the revenues from and management of the Estate is left to HM Government is what the sources state, and which you seem to be in overall agreement with. Please feel free to productively add to the article, however wholesale removal of facts and their supporting verifiable sources/inline citations in not acceptable and is not inline with Misplaced Pages Policy. Regards, trackratte (talk) 16:13, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Also, according to the Crown Estate Act, 1(2) and (3) state that everything the Commissioners do are on behalf of and in the name of the Queen (they manage the Estate on the Queen's behalf).

1.(1) The Commissioners are charged to manage the estate on behalf of the Crown, not on behalf of themselves or the Government.

2.(1) They make an annual report directly to the Queen every FY.

4.(1) The Commissioners may not dispose of land without the Sovereign's permission.

5.(3) The Commissioners may not sell or exchange lands without the Sovereigns permission.

5.(5) The Commissioners may not sell, lease, or otherwise dispose of any of the Queen's houses without her permission.

Schedules, The Commissioners are appointed by the Sovereign under Royal Warrant.

Thus, the sovereign has given assent to legislation which limits their ability to divest their public lands for personal gain, but still maintain ownership control in that no one can sell, exchange, or lease the sovereign's lands or properties without their personal, written consent. trackratte (talk) 16:36, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

I think the fundamental misunderstanding here is that the Sovereign of the United Kingdom is a corporation sole. Even though legally speaking, the office holder, the office, and the institution of the Crown are all one and the same (Elizabeth II, the Queen, and the Crown all mean the same thing within constitutional law), there is a conceptual difference. Thus, ownership over a given thing can be by the "Sovereign of the United Kingdom" (the Crown as an institution) or to "Elizabeth II" (a person), which is to say that the Sovereign's "privy estate" belongs to the House of Windsor as a family, and thus Elizabeth II owns this estate completely independently of her office as Queen (if the UK were to suddenly become a republic tomorrow and thus the institution of monarchy completely disappear, ownership of the privy estate would still rest with Elizabeth II). The "Public Estate" however, of which the Crown Estate is a part, belongs to the Sovereign of the United Kingdom as an office, and thus Elizabeth II owns the Estate only by virtue of her office of Queen (if the UK were to become a republic tomorrow and monarchy disappear, the ownership of the Crown Estate would theoretically transition to "the republic" in whatever form it would take).

So, Noel, I believe that when you say that the "Crown Estate is not the property of the monarch" or words to that effect, what you really mean is that the "Crown Estate is not the privy property of Elizabeth II", which conceptually is an entirely different statement.

I've added a blue link to the Corporation Sole article, as understanding this concept is fundamental to understanding the office of the Crown and anything linking to it. I think that once an editor or reader has a basic grasp of this concept, it makes it a great deal easier to understand the underlying legal and political fundamentals at work. So, if you are able to make the distinction between office and office-holder, I think you'll find that what you are saying and what the sources are saying is in fact the same thing, and it is only a question of using the appropriate terms and understanding some of the basic concepts underpinning their use. trackratte (talk) 19:13, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

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