Everyone thinks that Elizabeth II reigns, but does not rule. The Guardian's investigation into the "royal accord" shows that this is not entirely true

 

An investigation by The Guardian found evidence that Elizabeth II lobbied for changes to British bills. The publication examined documents showing the use by the royal family of a secret parliamentary procedure known as the "Queen's consent", and devoted a series of publications to this practice .

The essence of the procedure is that British ministers must warn the monarch if this or that bill may affect the private or public interests of the crown. Moreover, they must seek the "Queen's consent" before the bill is considered in parliament. This is in contrast to the more well-known procedure of "royal sanction"  - the moment when the queen only approves the adopted bill and it formally takes on the force of law.The royal family's website describes the "royal assent" as "a long-standing convention," and British lawyers tended to view it as an opaque but harmless monarchic relic, The Guardian emphasizes. After all, contrary to its name, "consent" is believed to be just a notice that does not give the Queen the right to block the bill.

But the publication found in the National Archives of Great Britain a number of documents refuting these ideas. It turns out that the very opportunity to get acquainted with the bills submitted to parliament in advance allowed the Queen and her lawyers to lobby for changes in British legislation several times.

Thus, in November 1973, the Queen was alarmed by the appearance of a bill with the help of which the government, under the leadership of Prime Minister Edward Heath, wanted to make ownership of shares transparent. Companies were planning to prohibit the purchase of shares through shell companies or nominees and thus hide assets. This would allow the public to gain access to information about royal assets and finances. Meanwhile, the true scale of the royal family's wealth has never been made public, although some estimates put it in the  hundreds of millions of pounds .

Elizabeth II sent her lawyer, Matthew Farrer, to the government to force officials to amend the bill. Farrer visited the Department of Trade and Industry and outlined the Queen's objection: the law would reveal her private investments in joint-stock companies, as well as their value. 

As early as next month, a new clause was included in the bill giving the government the right to exempt certain companies from the requirement to disclose the identity of their ultimate shareholders. Officially, this was done for the convenience of a number of wealthy investors, as well as persons affiliated with government agencies. But the authors of the initiative themselves were aware that the queen would benefit the most from this.

Almost immediately after the adoption of the bill, such an exemption was granted to a recently established company called Bank of England Nominees Limited, run by senior Bank of England managers. It was through her, according to a number of testimonies, that Elizabeth II began to own her shares. The exemption helped to hide her personal fortune until at least 2011, when the government announced that Bank of England Nominees Limited was no longer subject to this rule. A few years later, the company closed. What happened to the shares she nominally owned is unknown.

Another case is related to the attempt by the Harold Wilson government in 1968 to update the road safety law. According to the amendments, the same rules should be introduced on all roads to which the population has access. Elizabeth II's advisers tried to use the “Queen's consent” procedure to get an exception from the government and not apply general rules to her private estates. Farrer's lawyer explained to the government that he "definitely would not want any traffic rules to apply to them." In the end, the queen gave her consent to the bill - but after the government took into account her wishes.

Another case concerned a 1975 Labor lease bill for private building land. According to these proposals, the procedure had to be mediated by local authorities in order to keep rental rates at an acceptable level. Lawyers representing the royal family's estates, however, announced that the idea was "of great concern to them" and promised to refer their complaints to a senior minister. However, in the end, the queen agreed to this bill.

The last case discovered by the publication, when it took the "Queen's consent", dates back to 1982. Then the government of Margaret Thatcher developed a bill, which, among other things, involved the creation of a government commission to protect ancient monuments and historic buildings in England. This commission was to include an already existing royal commission with similar tasks. The Queen's personal secretary, Philip Moore, responded by saying that "Her Majesty is inclined to believe that it would be unwise to transfer the functions of the royal commission to the new commission." In the end, six months later, the Queen agreed to the bill. However, a separate royal commission existed for another 17 years and was merged with the government one only in 1999.

In total, about a thousand bills went through the "Queen's consent" procedure, The Guardian calculated . They ranged from justice, social security, pensions, race relations and food policy to rules regarding parking fees.

Some of the bills seem surprisingly far removed from the interests of the monarchy. The question arises why this procedure was required for their adoption, the newspaper states. These include, for example, the British Museum Act 1963, the Salmon Act 1986, and the 2019 Parking Bill for firms that force-lock the wheels of offenders.The Guardian suggests that in addition to the cases it discovered where the royal court directly intervened in lawmaking, there were others. For example, the government granted the Queen an exception to the 2006 Animal Cruelty Prevention Act, preventing inspectors in charge of these matters from inspecting her private property.

A representative of the queen told the publication that the question of whether the bill requires "the consent of the queen" is decided by parliament, it does so independently of the royal family, and only in matters that may affect the interests of the crown, including personal property and personal interests of the monarch. Queen's representatives declined to say how many times she has asked for legislative changes since her accession to the throne in 1952.

After the release of the investigation by The Guardian, Buckingham Palace dedicated a separate statement to him, saying that the Queen always gives the green light to bills submitted by the government and does not try to influence them. "Royal assent is a parliamentary procedure in which the role of the sovereign is purely formal," - said in a statement by representatives of Elizabeth II, which is quoted by the BBC.