UK Queen asked to slash spendings by 25 per cent: Report

Government officials have said they expect Queen Elizabeth II and her family to share the burden of budget cuts in the toughest review for a generation due on October 20, the Daily Express reported today.

Queen's annual Civil List payment, for performing her duties as head of state, has already been frozen at 7.9 million pounds while a wider review of royal funding is being conducted, the report said.

Now the royal family’s two other main sources of state funding, 22 million pounds for palace maintenance and travel have been earmarked for cuts over the next three years, it said.

The slash, which will come into effect in April 2011, may lead to the Queens and other royals undertaking fewer official duties in the run-up to her Diamond Jubilee year in 2012.

"All our bodies that we pay grants to have been told to expect reductions in the region of 25 per cent and the royal household is certainly not exempt from that," an official at the Department for Culture, which pays 15 million pounds a year for palaces, was quoted as saying by the British tabloid.

Officials at the Department for Transport, which granted the royal family 7.3 million pounds last year, were equally adamant the royal family would be hit by cuts. Buckingham Palace puts the annual cost of the monarchy to the taxpayer at 38.2 million pounds but that figure does not include security and other costs which put the bill closer to 180 million pounds a year.