![](\"https:\/\/cdn.rt.com\/files\/2016.09\/thumbnail\/57ed0164c46188bf218b45a2.jpg\")
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A Saudi prince and the Queen have been named in a list of wealthy landowners in the UK who receive hundreds of thousands of pounds in taxpayer-funded EU subsidies.<\/p>\n
Prince Khalid Abdullah al Saud receives more than \u00a3400,000 ($520,000) a year to subsidize a farm in Newmarket, Suffolk, while Queen Elizabeth II receives \u00a3557,706 a year.<\/p>\n
Both landowners are among the top 100 recipients of farm grants from the EU\u2019s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).<\/p>\n
At least one in five of the top 100 recipients of CAP subsidies were farms owned or controlled by members of aristocratic families, a Greenpeace investigation found.<\/p>\n
CAP was introduced in 1962 in a bid to stimulate European agricultural production. It continues to be one of the EU\u2019s largest expenditures, constituting 39 percent of the budget in 2013.<\/p>\n
Greenpeace are campaigning for CAP to be reformed, saying it is an \u201coutrage<\/em>\u201d subsidies are given to wealthy persons like Khalid Abdullah al Saud, who owns the prize-winning thoroughbred racehorse, Frankel, said to be worth over \u00a3100 million.<\/p>\n \u201cThe subsidy system is utterly broken. We need public money spent on farming to be offering demonstrable public benefits<\/em>,\u201d Greenpeace chief scientist Doug Parr told BBC News.<\/p>\n Aberdeenshire farmer Frank Smart receives the most CAP subsidies in the UK, taking in nearly \u00a33 million in grants for his business, Frank A Smart & Son Ltd.<\/p>\n Aristocrats are also big beneficiaries, with Lord Iveagh receiving \u00a3915,709, the Duke of Westminster taking home \u00a3427,433 and the Duke of Northumberland benefitting by \u00a3475,030.<\/p>\n Conservative MP Richard Drax is also in the top 100 beneficiaries. His jointly-owned farm received \u00a3351,752.<\/p>\n The Taxpayers\u2019 Alliance said: \u201cFarmers should be put on notice. Taxpayers shouldn\u2019t be handing out what are effectively land subsidies, often to extremely wealthy individuals<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n Asked if the Queen thought it appropriate to receive taxpayers\u2019 subsidy based on the size of her land holding, a spokesman for Buckingham Palace told the BBC: \u201cSubsidies are open to all farmers, and are received on the Queen\u2019s private estate. We would not comment beyond the detail that is already in the public domain<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Via RT<\/a>. This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission or license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A Saudi prince and the Queen have been named in a list of wealthy landowners in the UK who receive hundreds of thousands of pounds in taxpayer-funded EU subsidies. Prince Khalid Abdullah al Saud receives more than \u00a3400,000 ($520,000) a year to subsidize a farm in Newmarket, Suffolk, while Queen Elizabeth II receives \u00a3557,706 a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":270332,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-270331","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270331\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/270332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}