By Mark Duell, Rebecca English and Neil Sears, Daily Mail
– after they travelled to Britain with formal petition for Buckingham Palace
King Charles III will not personally receive a petition from Jamaica as its government steps up a campaign for Britain to pay £7.6billion in slavery reparations.
The Jamaican delegation has arrived in London with a petition for Buckingham Palace as it attempts to lobby the monarch for a massive payout by UK taxpayers.
Royal observers had initially expected the petition to be given to Charles as Jamaica’s head of state, asking him to put three questions to the Privy Council.
But Buckingham Palace has now told the Daily Mail this will not happen in person, with the King away in Scotland as he continues his annual summer break at Balmoral.
It comes as Jamaica hopes answers to questions in the petition, as well as talks with the Foreign Office, are steps towards a reparations payout by Britain.
The bid to entangle the King in the campaign focuses on how in 1833, after Britain led the world by banning slavery, it paid compensation to slave owners, not to slaves.
The £20million bill, amounting to 40 per cent of the Treasury’s annual income, meant Britain had to take out a huge loan, which was only paid off in 2015.
Jamaican culture minister Olivia Grange said on arrival in the UK: ‘Up to 2015, Britain was paying the slave masters because we were considered property.