The Princess of Wales joined the Royal Family on the balcony of Buckingham Palace for the Trooping the Colour flypast – after making her first public appearance since the announcement of her cancer diagnosis.
Kate, 42, wearing a pale outfit, was earlier pictured arriving at Buckingham Palace in a car sat alongside her children and her husband the Prince of Wales ahead of the event to celebrate the King’s official birthday.
The princess, who has been receiving treatment for an undisclosed form of cancer since late February, and her three children Prince George, Princess Charlotte, and Prince Louis, were cheered by crowds along The Mall as they left the palace in a carriage for the ceremony.
The future queen looked relaxed as she travelled along one of London’s most famous thoroughfares with her family in a carriage.
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Kate’s first public appearance this year
She could be seen smiling and talking to her children in the carriage before they arrived at Horse Guards Parade in Whitehall.
William rode on horseback for the procession, alongside the Princess Royal, and the Duke of Edinburgh.
The King, who is also undergoing cancer treatment, rode in a carriage with the Queen, a departure from last year because of his illness, and inspected the officers and guardsmen from the coach rather than from a horse.
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When the royal carriages finally came to a stop, Louis was the first to leave, followed by his elder brother George, and sister Charlotte.
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Finally, Kate stepped down wearing a Jenny Packham dress, hat by Philip Treacy, and the Irish Guards Regimental Brooch, as she is the regiment’s colonel.
In another change from last year, Kate did not join senior family members on a dais, but watched the military spectacle – also known as the Birthday Parade – from a balcony in the Duke of Wellington’s former office with her children.
Prince Louis, six, at one point seemed to be distracted by a blind cord and was seen yawning while watching the parade before dancing along during the quick march of the Scots Guards to Highland Laddie.
Heavy rain began to fall as the royal procession made its way back to Buckingham Palace but the King and Queen, as well as Kate and her children, were protected from the downpour in their covered carriage.
Princess Charlotte, nine, smiled and waved enthusiastically to the crowds who braved the weather, while her brothers also smiled and waved to the sea of umbrellas along The Mall.
A 41-gun salute was then fired by the King’s Troop Royal Horse Artillery in nearby Green Park before Kate and her family joined the King and Queen, as well as other royals, on the Buckingham Palace balcony to watch the RAF flypast.
They smiled and waved to the cheering crowds before standing proudly as the national anthem was played, with the flypast ending with the Red Arrows trailing their trademark red, white and blue colours.
Ahead of the event, Kate said: “I’m looking forward to attending the King’s Birthday Parade this weekend with my family and hope to join a few public engagements over the summer, but equally knowing I am not out of the woods yet.
“I am learning how to be patient, especially with uncertainty.
“Taking each day as it comes, listening to my body, and allowing myself to take this much needed time to heal.”
Her appearance was in doubt after she missed the final Trooping rehearsal last weekend.
This is Kate’s first official outing of 2024 after she missed engagements at the start of the year when she was admitted to hospital for abdominal treatment.
At the time her condition was thought to be non-cancerous, but tests after the successful operation found the disease, and Kate disclosed the diagnosis in March.
A time frame has not yet been set for Kate’s return to a full schedule of public engagements.
The architect of the government’s delayed reforms to social care has told Sky News politicians need to “grow up” and tackle the crisis in the sector.
Amid a bitter election row over public spending, Sir Andrew Dilnot said he believed the two main parties were reluctant to discuss care reform for fear of being accused of plotting future tax hikes.
Sir Andrew – whose 2011 report laid out several key measures adopted by the government – described social care as the “biggest risk that isn’t managed” that the country faces.
He said: “Four out of five people are going to need social care before they die, we should grow up and face it.”
“I think politicians are reluctant to talk about it firstly because they’re worried about anything that means an increase in public spending and therefore possible taxation,” he added.
The implementation of a cap on care costs, unveiled by Boris Johnson, was delayed in 2022 until October next year.
The policy promised to limit the amount anyone in England will spend on personal care over their life to £86,000.
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Speaking to Sky News on the campaign trail, Rishi Sunak said those charging reforms were still “on track”.
Labour has not explicitly committed to the cap in its manifesto, but a party source confirmed that it would also bring in the reforms as planned.
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While the Liberal Democrats have made social care a key part of its policy offering, the sector has barely featured in the campaigns of the main two parties.
Norman Phillips is a carer for his wife Ros – who lives with multiple sclerosis and dementia.
Initially he was able to combine work with his caring responsibilities but as Ros’s condition worsened, he took early retirement.
“It was the stress and strain of trying to work… and saying look I’m terribly sorry, but I’ve got to turn around and go back to Stevenage because I can’t find anyone to look after Ros… that was tolerated for a while because I always got the work done… but then it went a bit pear shaped and… I collapsed in the street,” he said.
The couple found help hard to come by and after Norman suffered an injury, they were forced to sell their home to settle care-related debts.
“My kids learned a long time ago that their inheritance is gone… we don’t have any money left. We didn’t have any money left a while back,” Mr Phillips said.
Ros is now subject to an NHS continuing healthcare plan after Norman suffered a breakdown earlier this year and authorities decided he was unable to carry on caring for his wife.
This includes round the clock care for Ros – something Norman says wouldn’t have been needed if a lower level of help had been made available earlier.
He said: “They’ve got six million of us unpaid carers. If they… help us, we can help the system.
“But what’s happened to me, you know, is the system just kept backing away and backing away until I cracked.”
The idea of a cap was first suggested by the Dilnot Commission and put into legislation in 2014.
However its planned implementation in 2016 was delayed by the David Cameron government on cost grounds.
An attempt to reform the sector during the 2017 election was widely seen as the reason for Theresa May losing her Commons majority.
In his first speech as prime minister in 2019, Boris Johnson said he had a “clear plan” to “fix the crisis in social care once and for all”.
Reforms were announced in 2021 alongside an increase in National Insurance to fund the wider sector.
However this tax rise was reversed under Liz Truss before the broader changes were delayed under Rishi Sunak.
It means that many people requiring care are still potentially liable for costs that can stretch to thousands of pounds per month.
Sir Andrew said the lack of suitable social care was also having a “knock on effect” on the NHS as older people ended up stuck in hospitals.
“Lots of elective procedures rely on being able to have a bed and if you’ve got one older person… in hospital for twenty days more than is needed, that could easily mean ten hip replacements not being able to happen because there isn’t the bed space,” he said.
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Care bosses have also highlighted staffing shortages caused by low pay as another key problem in the sector while councils have called for more funding from the government.
Speaking to Sky News, Rishi Sunak said £8.5bn was put into the NHS and social care shortly after he became prime minister and that his government had focused on “improving the link between social care and hospitals… but also investing in the workforce”.
A Labour source said “the social care chapter in our manifesto includes a commitment over the next decade to build a national care service, and first steps of a fair pay agreement for care workers”.
Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting also admitted that he wanted a “more ambitious” social policy but that it had to be “affordable” to be included in the manifesto.
From Rishi Sunak, we saw the good, the bad and the ugly during the latest TV election showdown with other party leaders – and a tough and unforgiving audience.
The good came when he broke his silence on the Tory betting scandal early on in his half-hour session of questions, declaring he was “incredibly angry” and vowing that any law breakers would be “booted out” of his party.
The bad followed when he struggled to defend his own policy on national service for 18-year-olds and was tetchy with an audience member who asked about Brexit.
And the ugly came at the end when the audience angrily shouted “shame!” when he launched into Reform UK-style rhetoric about the European Convention on Human Rights and attacked what he called a “foreign court”.
That sort of talk may play well with right-wing MPs and activists, but it bombed here and will have alienated those voters thinking of switching to Labour or the Liberal Democrats.
So Mr Sunak started well, got bogged down in detail in the middle and then ended badly, though he eventually did manage to land some blows on Labour on tax – as he has continued to do so throughout the election campaign.
The two takeaways from the PM’s part of this election programme will be his threat to expel betting wrongdoers and his misjudging the audience on the ECHR.
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But not surprisingly, that wasn’t good enough for opposition MPs.
Immediately after the programme, Labour’s Jonathan Ashworth told Sky News Mr Sunak still has not taken any action against Tory candidates Craig Williams and Laura Saunders, who are being investigated by the Gambling Commission.
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He should have suspended them immediately, as Sir Keir Starmer has demanded, Mr Ashworth said.
But despite the shouts of “shame!” from the audience on the ECHR near the end, Mr Sunak will feel that with the Tories losing votes to Nigel Farage he had to throw the Tory right and would-be Reform UK voters some red meat.
Those Tory MPs who love to hate the ECHR will no doubt have approved of Mr Sunak’s attack as far as it went – and no doubt accuse the BBC of selecting a “lefty” audience.
Before Mr Sunak, Sir Keir stumbled once again, as he did in his interview with Beth Rigby in last week’s Sky News Battle for No 10 programme in Grimsby, when asked about his support for Jeremy Corbyn.
Host Fiona Bruce repeatedly challenged Sir Keir on why he said Mr Corbyn would make a great prime minister in 2019, but the Labour leader kept dodging the question and looked shifty.
Eventually, Sir Keir said, rather lamely, that Mr Corbyn would have made a better prime minister than Boris Johnson.
Tories will no doubt taunt him on that claim for the rest of the campaign.
Sir Keir’s other tricky moments came when he was quizzed about his dispute with Labour MP Rosie Duffield on trans issues.
“I agree with Tony Blair,” he said. But he shunned the Canterbury MP and couldn’t bring himself to mention her name.
That was disrespectful. The Labour leader seems to have a problem with Ms Duffield. It makes him sound intolerant, which his critics would say is fair criticism.
The surprise here was a solid performance from the SNP leader John Swinney. He is less confrontational than the party’s Westminster leader Stephen Flynn.
He has a funereal style of delivery that has previously seen him compared to an undertaker.
He could also be compared to a Church of Scotland priest reading from the prayer book, to be fair.
But he’s an old pro and a details man, as he demonstrated when answering tricky questions about the SNP performance on the NHS in Scotland and was courteous with members of the audience, even when the questions were tough.
It all began with Sir Ed Davey, who was immediately greeted with the question: “Aren’t you going to bankrupt the country?”
“No,” he replied.
Well, it would have been a shock if he’d said yes.
The second questioner was applauded after he accused Sir Ed of breaking promises in coalition government, citing the Lib Dems’ U-turn on tuition fees.
He was also ridiculed by a member of the audience over his “horseplay” in the campaign, the stunts such as splashing around on Lake Windermere and riding on a rollercoaster at Thorpe Park in Surrey.
And inevitably, he was asked if he was proud of his record as Post Office minister during the Horizon scandal.
The questions were tough, but he dealt with them calmly. His style was that of a fireside chat.
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As the search continues for missing Jay Slater, members of the local community rallied at a church event as his friends hoped for the return of the British teen they described as the “life and soul of the party”.
The 19-year-old from Oswaldtwistle, near Blackburn in Lancashire, was on holiday in Tenerife with friends when he went missing on Monday.
At a church in his home town, locals used blue ribbons to mark a service of hope as they left messages to the missing teen.
Two friends, speaking to Sky News, also shared stories of the teen they hoped would soon be found.
One friend of Mr Slater’s said: “We’ve known him for a long time. We’re always out with him. He’s the life and soul of the party.
“Everywhere you see him he’s just constantly got a smile on his face. He’s always just a happy chap.”
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“He’s just one of a kind really,” they added.
They continued: “I don’t think you could walk through any street [in Oswaldtwistle] and someone would say they don’t know him. He’s just constantly happy wherever you see him, no matter what.
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“He’s just always got a smile on his face. Hopefully, someone somewhere knows something and hopefully he can get found.”
A second friend told Sky News: “I can’t hope enough, I literally can’t. It’s been on my mind since Monday morning.
“I just can’t seem to understand why this has happened to him and why no-one has heard anything. It’s crazy, I’m lost for words.”
The friend continued: “We feel like we can’t do anything about it because we’re over here and he’s over there. If we could get a flight tomorrow we would do.”
West End Methodist Church, in Oswaldtwistle, opened its doors for an hour on Thursday evening for friends, family members and people from the local community to show their support for the search.
Mr Slater’s stepdad, Andy, was present at the church with the teenager’s dog Buster.
He signed a message of hope “come home soon Jay” from them both.
Reverend Matt Smith told Sky News: “You can see with the ribbons and everything that is coming out that everyone is really tight here.
“There are things on Facebook coming out as well just wanting us to do something to allow them to come and share their respects and their prayers and their well-wishes to the family and show that we want Jay to come home.”
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He continued: “Over the few days as we’ve realised he hasn’t been found, that actually we’re getting more and more worried about what’s happened to him, and the family going out there and responding in that way as well.
“The community are just coming together to support each other and it’s just really important to have each other’s backs when that happens and to take care of each other.”