Thatcher funeral cost just £3.6m — a THIRD of reported figure

LADY Thatcher’s funeral cost just £3.6million, The Sun can reveal.

The actual price of the Iron Lady’s ceremonial send-off has come in at a THIRD of the £10million figure bandied around by her left wing enemies.

Cabinet Office officials have calculated that the whole event at St Paul’s last Wednesday cost just £1.6m.

That includes the actual funeral service in the cathedral, the military parade up to it — staffed by 800 servicemen and women — and the policing costs for the mammoth security operation to protect it.

An extra £2million went on paying the 4,000 cops involved — but many of them would have been at work anyway.

Ceremony ... servicemen bear ex-PM's coffin from St Paul's cathedral

Several left leaning national newspapers plastered the erroneous £10m sum over their front pages 48 hours after Lady T’s death on April 8.

That was leaped on by left wing Labour MPs, including Hackney’s Diane Abbott, to savage the farewell and ignite a bitter row.

At the time, the funeral's organiser Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude warned the event would only cost “a fraction”.

Lady T’s family also chipped in to reduce the event's price tag further, but they are keeping the size of their bill confidential.

The sum means Maggie’s farewell was far cheaper than the Queen Mum’s 11 years earlier in 2002, which was priced at £6m.

Read more: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/politics/4903067/Thatcher-funeral-cost-just-36m-a-THIRD-of-reported-figure.html#ixzz2RUuqqA14