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The Windsor family is resisting greater parliamentary scrutiny of its £21m annual income from the duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall.

Parliament's public accounts committee wants the Treasury to review the workings of the duchies and for their accounts to be audited by the National Audit Office.

The family's head of finance, Michael Peat, said that the committee was wrong to believe that duchies were accountable to parliament. He claimed that they were the private property of the Windsors.

Under Britain's feudal system the income from the duchies is given to the hereditary head of state and to the next in line for that public office. When Charles Windsor becomes head of state he will lose the income he currently receives from the Cornwall duchy but will receive the income from the Duchy of Lancaster that currently goes to his mother.

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Many of the 2000 inhabitants of the Scilly Isles are “in a state of rebellion” against the son of Britain's hereditary head of state, according to the conservative Sunday Telegraph newspaper. The newspaper reported that the Scilly islanders are “appalled and disgusted” because the Duchy of Cornwall, which is Mr. Windsor's main source of income, is putting profit before the housing needs of local people.

A house that was used to accommodate school teachers has been put up for rent by the Duchy at £1500 per week. Many islanders earn less than £10,000 a year. A family of four were told to leave another house so that it may be let to holiday makers at £1000 per week. Other houses have been advertised in Country Life magazine on 10-year leases at rents of up to £15,000 a year.

The Duchy owns thirty per cent of the 1150 residential properties in the Scilly Islands as well as all the land on uninhabited islands.

The Duchy of Cornwall, which has feudal origins, generated an income of £13m for Mr. Windsor last year. He is due to become Britain's head of state on the death of his mother, Elizabeth Windsor. The Windsor family has for many years associated itself with charitable causes in order to justify its continuing hold on feudal power and wealth.

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