DIGNITARIES GIVEN SPECIAL SERIAL NUMBER FIVERS

Members of the Royal Family, government and civil service are used to having a keen sense of hierarchy. Now their place among the great and the good has been given added currency by serial numbers on the new £5 note.

The Bank of England has donated the lowest numbered new polymer fivers, worth thousands of pounds, to a select group of figures, as well as institutions linked to Sir Winston Churchill, who is pictured on the note’s back.

A list of 29 notes, about half with historically symbolic serial numbers, has been disclosed by the Bank under the Freedom of Information Act and shows that after the Queen and Prince Philip, Theresa May was given the note with the number AA01 000003, the number with the third lowest serial number, and Philip Hammond, the chancellor, the fourth.

The Bank is understood to have sent a description of the significance of the notes to the recipients, but declined to say why it had chosen certain numbers.

Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank, at whose discretion the recipients are chosen, received two: the note with the fifth-lowest number and one ending 1940, the year Churchill became prime minister.

Politicians and mandarins to have received a note include Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary and biographer of Churchill, and Tom Scholar, permanent secretary to the Treasury. Both have been held by their departments.

Andrew Tyrie, chairman of the Commons Treasury select committee, which holds the Bank to account, has also received a note.

The only ambassador to receive one of the notes was Matthew Barzun, the US ambassador to London, who received one ending 1941, the year America entered the Second World War.

The Bank held a charity auction through Spink & Son of low-numbered notes, starting with AA01 000017, the lowest number available to the public, which sold for £4,150. The Bank raised £194,500 in total for three charities chosen by its staff, The Myotubular Trust, The Lily Foundation and Bliss.

David adds:

To read the complete article, see:
Bank hands out high-value fivers to high flyers (www.thetimes.co.uk/article/bank-hands-out-high-value-fivers-to-high-flyers-f93c2tldw)

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