THE Duchess of Cornwall is to miss almost a quarter of the engagements on her Caribbean tour with Prince Charles to spend more time on a £50 million luxury yacht.
***SEE MORE OF CHARLES AND CAMILLA'S CARIBBEAN TOUR IN TODAY IN PICTURES***
Camilla, who was once accused by senior royal aide Mark Bolland of being "monumentally lazy", will miss 10 of the 44 engagements on the taxpayer-funded tour so that she can "rest" or prepare for other duties on the 246ft superyacht Leander.
Aides said she would be absent from some jobs because they involved subjects specifically of interest to Charles - such as meeting business leaders or discussing climate change.
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Camilla meets a reef polyp in Trinidad
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On other occasions, she will return to the boat for a meal while Charles works through lunch, or go back to the yacht because she needs more time to get ready than her husband.
"There are several occasions when she needs to get back to the boat, such as a State dinner, to give her more time to prepare. A lady needs more time to get ready than a man," a senior royal aide said.
Unusually, Camilla, who flew out to Antigua for a week's holiday with her son Tom, daughter-in-law Sara and their baby Lola before the official visit, is doing no solo engagements during the 11-day sunshine tour of four Caribbean countries.
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Camilla was once accused of being "monumentally lazy"
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She and Charles have hired the Leander, a £320,000-a-week yacht at a specially-negotiated discount from British businessman Sir Donald Gosling to tour Trinidad and Tobago, St Lucia, Jamaica, and Montserrat. The bill will be footed by the taxpayer.
Clarence House has claimed using the yacht instead of flights between the islands will reduce the official party's carbon footprint by 40 per cent. Some environmentalists, however, have argued it will cause more pollution than flying.
In addition, royal officials have declined to estimate the likely cost of the tour, which the couple are undertaking at the request of the Foreign Office.
Their refusal to discuss the cost to the taxpayer comes amid mounting concern at Westminster over the Royal Family's lack of transparency and accountability to Parliament.
A Daily Express investigation has revealed that the Foreign Office, which requests all official overseas visits by the Royal Family, has no idea how much public money has been spent on Charles and Camilla's last few visits to six countries.
It has full financial details about only one visit in the last few years - a £143,000 weekend trip to the United States for Charles to collect an environmental award in January 2007.
And that is only because one MP, Labour backbencher Andrew MacKinlay, asked persistent questions in Parliament about it.
But officials insist that no central records are normally kept of the cost to the taxpayer of royal tours. Buckingham Palace publishes an annual list of the costs of the flights but there is no publicly available information on the costs of accommodation, entertainment, official gifts and other items.
In addition, the Foreign Office refuses to publish any sort of report assessing whether royal tours have met their objectives. Ministers do not provide Parliament with any routine feedback
Mr MacKinlay, the MP for Thurrock and a member of the influential Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee, has tabled a series of questions to Foreign Secretary David Miliband about Charles and Camilla's Caribbean trip.
He said the Queen did a wonderful job for Britain but there needed to be much more openness about the financing of the Royal Family.
"We need a properly and openly-funded office for the deputy head of state, which is what Prince Charles is effectively, but there needs to be much greater transparency about how his household spends and receives its money," he said.
"When Charles goes to Jamaica, for example, where he is the deputy head of state, surely that country should be paying for everything, including his security? But I don't think that's what is happening."
"At the moment, it's all smoke and mirrors. And the Foreign Office tends to fudge things."
The revelation that Camilla is missing such a high proportion of engagements and the lack of openness about the cost and effectiveness of overseas trips astonished taxpayers' groups.
Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the Taxpayers' Alliance, said: "Since taxpayers are picking up the tab for much of Charles and Camilla's trip, many people will find it surprising that Camilla is not attending more of the functions.
"If the Royal Family use money from the public purse to travel overseas, then taxpayers have a right to know that they are fulfilling their royal duties by seeing information on who they met and what was achieved.
"When people go overseas on business, they report back to their bosses on what they did, so the Royal Family should do likewise."
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UNREAL!
09.03.08, 5:53pm
Can anyone imagine the Queen complaining of being exhausted? She wouldn't now, nor would she when she was Camilla's age and the QM was going strong.
Whatever her title...duchess, mistress, etc...this woman is lazy. It's not about health and stamina, it's about her attitude. She, like her husband, wants to have her cake and eat it too.
• Posted by: Monika • Report Comment
'LAZY' CAMILLA IN YACHT ROW
08.03.08, 7:50pm
Camilla is 60 or nearly 60, which is an age most women retire. It's no one's fault if she doesn't have the amazing and exceptional energy and health the Queen has. Besides, Charles is the royal personage, the person with the relevant position. If she didn't want to do any of his public duties at all, I think that would be her right.
• Posted by: IJones • Report Comment
THEY SHOULD BE FINANCIALLY ACCOUNTABLE TO THE PUBLIC
08.03.08, 7:49pm
They are a waste of space and a waste of money - and every penny of taxpayers money spent by them should be accountable, indeed, I am appalled that it isn't.
Having whiled away weeks at Balmoral over Christmas, then done a bit of ski-ing, how convenient of the Foreign Office to 'suggest' this trip to the Caribbean during the winter. I wonder how they'll fill their time between the end of this trip and the summer at Sandringham?
Lazy? Maybe the words, "monumentally lazy" doesn't quite describe her - or either of them.
He was born a freeloader, and their widely disapproved marriage made her one too.
• Posted by: CathyK • Report Comment
I LIKE CAMILLA
08.03.08, 6:17pm
At least there's one person in the world uglier than me
• Posted by: KaosTheory • Report Comment
OBVIOUSLY PRINCE CHARLES' "CASH COW" IS NOT BEING USED TO FUND THIS TRIP, HENCE HIS GOING ALONG WITH HIS "LADY'S" FAILURE TO DO WHAT A MEMBER OF THE "FIRM" SHOULD BE DOING
08.03.08, 4:37pm
If I as an English woman were still living in Britain, I would spend my time asking questions.
PRINCE CHARLES’ £14m INCOME
The Prince of Wales has a private income of more than £14 million which he gets from the Duchy of Cornwall.
He uses the funds partly on fulfilling his public duties and partly on personal expenditure, including money for his wife the Duchess of Cornwall and Princes William and Harry.
Charles received £14,067,000 from the Duchy of Cornwall in 2005/06, compared to £13,274,000 the year before.
The Duchy, which has been dubbed the Prince’s cash cow, was established in 1337 by Edward III to provide income for his eldest son, the Black Prince.
Charles’ £14 million plus income dwarfs the salaries given to bosses of some of Britain’s biggest companies.
This year, he disclosed details of his tax bill for the first time.
Clarence House’s annual accounts revealed that the heir to the throne paid around £3.3million to the Inland Revenue in 2005-2006 on his private income.
In previous years, aides declined to say how much tax Charles handed over, with his financial reports only including a figure combining both his tax and personal expenditure.
His final tax bill came to 23 per cent of the £14million.
The Prince, who pays tax voluntarily, deducts business expenses first of all.
The Duchy of Cornwall’s landed estate and investments is valued at more than £551million in total.
It grew in value by nearly £46million last year - a rise of over 9 per cent from £505,623,000 to £551,597,000
The success of the Duchy in 2005-2006 was put down to commercial property and development land.
Charles does not own the Duchy’s assets, but his income is generated from areas such as rent, or dividends on shares.
Neither Charles, as the 24th Duke of Cornwall, nor his sons, Princes William and Harry, receive an allowance from the Civil List, money for the royal family voted by Parliament from tax revenues.
As a Crown Body, the Duchy is tax-exempt
• Posted by: Rothaymere • Report Comment
CAMILLA -
08.03.08, 4:34pm
She doesn't have enough hours in the day to get herself ready, she is an ugly old hag and I don't think there is enough polyfilla available to fill in all her wrinkles.
• Posted by: gobsmacked • Report Comment
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