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King Charles abandons plans to attend Cop27
‘following Liz Truss’s advice’
Prime minister reportedly raised objections to him
going during personal audience at Buckingham Palace
King Charles was invited to the 26th UN climate change
conference in Sharm el-Sheikh and was ‘all lined up to go’, a source told the
Sunday Times.
Nadeem
Badshah
Sat 1 Oct
2022 22.23 BST
King
Charles III has reportedly abandoned plans to attend and deliver a speech at
the Cop27 climate change summit on the advice of Liz Truss.
The
monarch, a veteran campaigner on environmental issues, had been invited to the
27th UN climate change conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, next month.
But the
prime minister is understood to have raised objections during a personal
audience at Buckingham Palace last month, according to the Sunday Times.
Buckingham
Palace has confirmed King Charles III will not attend the summit.
A senior
royal source told the newspaper: “It is no mystery that the King was invited to
go there. He had to think very carefully about what steps to take for his first
overseas tour, and he is not going to be attending Cop.”
They said
the decision was made on the government’s advice and was “entirely in the
spirit of being ever-mindful as King that he acts on government advice”.
However, it remains “under active discussion” about how King Charles will make
his presence felt at Cop27, which runs from 6 to 18 November.
Another
source said the new monarch would be “personally disappointed” to miss the
conference and was “all lined up to go”, with several engagements planned
around his Sustainable Markets Initiative (SMI), which aims to persuade
businesses to invest in environmentally friendly initiatives.
“The Queen
gave an entirely non-political address at Cop last year … it sounds like he is
not being given the choice. That is an error of judgment on the part of the
government,” the Sunday Times was told.
The
73-year-old has played an active role in previous environmental summits. The
King delivered the opening speech at Cop21 in Paris in 2015, calling for a
“vast military-style campaign” to fight climate change and urging world leaders
to commit “trillions, not billions, of dollars”.
He also
convened world leaders and businesses to encourage them to sign up to the
landmark Paris climate agreement before the summit.
Last year,
King Charles III delivered a speech at the opening ceremony of Cop26 in
Glasgow, calling on world leaders to adopt a “warlike footing” to deal with the
threat of climate change.
In the
run-up to Cop26, he invited the US special envoy on climate, John Kerry, to
Clarence House in London, in stark contrast to the government, which failed to
send a minister when Kerry made a major speech at Kew.
During the
platinum jubilee celebrations in June, the new Prince of Wales delivered a
speech after pictures of the planet were projected on to Buckingham Palace.
William
said at the time: “As I watch those extraordinary images, it does make me think
of all the monumental and pioneering work of so many visionary
environmentalists that have gone before.
“I’m so
proud that my grandfather and my father have been part of those efforts.”
The summit
would have been King Charles’s first overseas trip as sovereign.
It is
standard protocol for the monarch to seek the guidance of the government before
accepting an invitation overseas, a source told the Guardian.
A No 10
spokeswoman said: “We do not comment on meetings between the prime minister and
the King.”
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