King Charles to return to public duties

Let’s join our royal correspondent Laura Bundock. She’s outside Buckingham Palace. For us and Laura, the Palace have described this as a milestone and it seems that way, doesn’t it? The clear suggestion being the Kin’s treatment is going well. Certainly that’s the news coming from his medical teams. After what has been an incredibly difficult few months, we have a piece of positive news from the Palace and certainly the kind of news the King will be wanting to. The official line from the Palace is that he is greatly encouraged with the news that he can now return to public facing duties. But speak to his team on the ground here and they will tell you he is at the bit to get back to business. Don’t forget his constitutional business, he official duties, the red boxes, the audiences, they’ve all continued but very much behind the scenes. So what we will see from next week is a return to those public facing duties. Duties at the king enjoys so much. He knows from his late mother’s mantra you have to be seen to be believed as monarch and that is something he holds very close to him. I think we had a hint, a sign that this might be happening at Easter when we saw the King and Queen go and meet some of the crowds who gathered outside George’s Chapel. He was clearly delighted to be able to to shake their hands to hear their well wishes, which as we know, have meant so much to him over the last few weeks. Remember, it was only 11 weeks ago that was stood here with news that the King’s cancer diagnosis. And here we are now with positives. Step 4. But he can return to some public facing duties, Yes, and I guess those public facing duties will increase or diminish as the health of the King continues. It’ll be taken a decision taken by him with his doctors, absolutely. I mean it’s very clear speaking to the Palace that the medical advice has been right from the start that he shouldn’t be allowed to take part in anything that public facing due to the risks to him while he was undergoing the treatment, while he was recovering from the treatment as well. But the news now from those medics is that they are sufficiently pleased with the progress he’s been making that they remain positive about his recovery and very encouraged, which is why the decision has been taken that he can now get back to work. As I say, the work has been going on behind the scenes at Buckingham Palace, but it is the out and about side to his role that has had to be put on pause. We’ve seen other members of the family, obviously other senior roles, stepping up while the king hasn’t been able to get out and about as as he would have liked. But now it’ll be him himself and that very personal and poignant first engagement next week to a cancer treatment stand centre where him and the Queen will meet, patients will meet. The staff have been going through and understand what the King has been going through himself all along. We’ve been told that by going so public with his diagnosis, by by announcing it in the way in this unprecedented way if you like, he has wanted to try and raise awareness, to try and get encourage other people to get themselves checked. Similarly to when we heard the Princess of Wales’s announcement that she too had cancer. She wanted people to know that they are not alone. So that very much the feeling. But I think behind all this we are being reminded that while this is good news, it is positive news. It is not the all clear yet. The King is still undergoing regular treatment. His engagements may have to be tweaked along the they may have to be adapted as and when the situation arise by that, his team at Buckingham Palace will be looking very carefully at them. They will be managing and planning these engagements to to reduce and minimise the risk to the King as he, as I say, continues his recovery and continues the treatment too.