EX-PRINCE CAN CLAIM TAXPAYER SUBSIDY OF THOUSANDS OF POUNDS A YEAR FROM FEBRUARY
The stipend the King has promised his brother Andrew Mountbatten Windsor when he moves to Sandringham in the New Year could be supplemented by a taxpayer funded state pension which will rise to £9500 a year from April.
On 19 February Andrew will be 66 and can claim a state pension. If he does, my calculations indicate that will be at least £135.28 a week and he could boost that to £174.75 a week by buying extra national insurance contributions (NICs). State pensions are paid for life and increased each year. From April the boosted amount would rise to £9500 a year.
The state pension will be due because Andrew served in the Navy for more than 22 years. From May 1979 to July 2001 he was employed and paid as a naval officer, ending his service as a Commodore. He already has a Navy pension estimated at around £20,000 a year. He did not do any other paid jobs in his adult life - his ten year stint from 2001 as international trade representative was unpaid – but that time in the Navy would count as 23 years of National Insurance Contributions which will entitle him to a partial state pension.
The calculation of the amount he could get is complex. The full new state pension is currently £230.25 a week but to get that requires 35 years of NICs. With 23 years contributions the starting point for his pension calculation would be 23/35ths of the full amount or £151.31 a week.
The next step is to compare that to what he would have got under the old state pension rules which required only 30 years to get a full pension. He would have 23/30ths of the old pension – currently £176.45 a week – so his entitlement would be £135.28 a week. He would not have any entitlement to additional pension through what was called SERPS – State Earnings Related Pension Scheme – because he was paying into a Navy pension which meant he was ‘contracted out’ of SERPS and paid lower National Insurance Contributions as a result. So the starting amount for his pension would be £151.31 a week.
However, because he did not pay into SERPS the rules reduce that amount by what is called a Contracted Out Pension Equivalent or COPE to reflect those lower contributions. It is impossible to work out how much his COPE might be. But it cannot leave him with less than he would have got on the old state pension. So he would be entitled to at least the £135.28 a week of the old state pension and it is likely that would in fact be his state pension entitlement.
However, he could make it more. If a state pension is reduced the individual can pay extra National Insurance Contributions from 2016/17 to boost it. They cannot be paid for the year in which the individual reaches 66, which in his case is the present tax year 2025/26. Nor can they be currently be paid for years earlier than 2019/20. That leaves six years to 2024/25 which he could pay if he chose to.
It would be a good deal. Each year bought boosts the reduced state pension by 1/35th of the full amount or £6.58 a week. So if he paid all six years he would boost his pension by £39.47 taking it to £174.75 a week or £9087 a year. Each year’s contributions cost £923 so six years. But the total cost of £5538 would boost his pension by £2052 a year so the payback time is short – less than 3.5 years if he pays basic rate tax and less than five years if he pays the 45% top rate tax. With average male life expectancy at 66 of 19 years it would be well worth doing.
From April state pensions will be increased by 4.8% and for the next three Aprils by the triple lock which will mean a rise of at least 2.5% a year. After they may rise by inflation or earnings. But that means Andrew would be given a total of at least £210,000 of taxpayer’s money at Sandringham if he claimed his pension, boosted it, and lived there to the average age of 85.
Buckingham Palace admitted that 76-year-old King Charles, has claimed his state pension but gives it on receipt to charity. Adding whether Andrew MB will claim his is “up to him”
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4 November 2025
