Queen misses Privy Council meeting as doctors insist on rest
THERE were fresh fears for the Queen’s health last night after she was forced to postpone a Privy Council meeting at the last minute on doctors’ advice.
Following a busy day on Tuesday, during which she greeted both Boris Johnson and Liz Truss at Balmoral, as well as undertaking other light duties, the 96-year-old monarch has been told to rest.
She had been due to hold the Privy Council virtually yesterday evening, during which the new Prime Minister would have taken her oath as First Lord of the Treasury and Cabinet ministers would have been sworn into their roles and made privy counsellors, if not already appointed as one in the past.
It comes after a string of health problems for the increasingly frail sovereign, who was advised not to travel to London from her Highland home this week to accept the resignation of her
‘Follows a string of health problems’
outgoing Prime Minister and appoint Miss Truss.
It was the first time in her 70-year reign that the Queen has appointed a Prime Minister at Balmoral.
The two politicians made the 1,000 round trip from London rather than making her, who has suffered episodic mobility problems since last October, travel back from Scotland.
Buckingham Palace said there were no constitutional issues with the delay to proceedings, which will be rearranged, and that the decision to encourage Her Majesty to rest has not involved a hospital stay.
But the decision to postpone the virtual meeting will, inevitably, cause renewed concern for the Queen’s health.
A Palace spokesman said last night: ‘After a full day yesterday, Her Majesty has this afternoon accepted doctors’ advice to rest.
‘This means that the Privy Council meeting that had been due to take place this evening will be rearranged.’
The Queen was pictured on Tuesday smiling and alert, but still frail, using a stick and sporting extensive bruising on her hands as the inevitable result of her advancing years.
It was the first time she had been seen in public for 47 days, while enjoying her wellearned annual break on Royal Deeside. As well as meeting Mr Johnson and Miss Truss on Tuesday, the Queen also had another duty afterwards: investing her outgoing communications secretary Donal McCabe with the Insignia of a Lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order, an honour in the monarch’s personal gift for service to the royal family.
She also dealt with several red boxes of papers, while a number of guests were seen leaving the castle before the first audiences began. The Queen often has family members and friends to stay during her annual holiday and is said to have been ‘inundated’ with company this year – although, notably, not her grandson Prince Harry and his wife Meghan, who are in the UK briefly on a visit from California.
Well-placed sources have repeatedly said that the monarch is ‘old, not ill’, and one person who saw her recently described her as being ‘on excellent form’. But last week she chose not to attend another staple of the royal calendar, the Braemar Gathering – the most famous event from the Highland Games circuit, while earlier in the year the Prince of Wales stood in for her at the State Opening of Parliament.
She secretly spent a night in hospital last October undergoing tests and was then under doctors’ orders to rest for the next three months, missing the Remembrance Sunday Cenotaph service in London and Cop26 climate change talks in Glasgow.
The Queen, who lost Prince Philip – her husband of 73 years – in April last year, then caught Covid in February and suffered from mild cold-like symptoms but said the virus left her ‘very tired and exhausted’.
As the nation’s longestreigning monarch she was, however, able to make two short appearances at her Platinum Jubilee celebrations in June.