Belvoir Castle, home to the divorced Duke and Duchess of Rutland. Photograph: Ian Dagnall/Alamy
Dozens of members of Britain’s land-owning aristocracy have claimed under the taxpayer-funded furlough scheme to pay staff at their ancestral estates and personal businesses.
Analysis of publicly available data reveals the names of at least 50 nobles, including dukes, earls, viscounts, barons and marquesses, who have drawn on public funds.
The list includes the owners of vast inherited estates with a combined area nearly the size of Worcestershire, as well as hereditary peers already paid by the taxpayer to sit in the House of Lords, and the owners of multimillion-pound art collections.