Why Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are returning to the UK

Prince Harry has returned to the UK to embark on his final round of official engagements as a senior royal.

The Duke of Sussex was pictured at Edinburgh’s Waverley Station on Tuesday night after travelling by train to the Scottish capital, where he is hosting a summit focused on his sustainable tourism project Travalyst today, the London Evening Standard reports.

The royal is expected to unveil a holiday scheme with a “scoring system” to help tourists pick environmentally friendly flights.

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The conference “marks the beginning of his last stretch of public events before he and his wife Meghan Markle officially give up their royal duties”, the newspaper notes. Harry flew to Canada on 20 January to be with his wife and their baby son, Archie, after the Queen granted their request to step back from royal duties and become more “financially independent”.

The Duchess is expected to join her husband in London for an awards ceremony for sick and injured military personnel on 5 March. The couple are also due to attend the Mountbatten Music Festival at the Royal Albert Hall on 7 March.

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They are preparing to close their office at Buckingham Palace before officially stepping down from royal duties on 31 March, making up to 15 members of staff redundant. However, a small team will continue to work on the Travalyst project, according to the Daily Mail.

Former press officer James Holt and former assistant private secretary Heather Wong, a long-serving policy advisor to Harry, will both be on the staff, the paper reports.

Last week, the Palace released updates on the new working model for the Sussexes, saying “the Duke and Duchess of Sussex do not intend to use ‘Sussex Royal’ in any territory post-spring 2020”.

In response, the couple laid “bare their frustrations at negotiations with the Palace”, says The Telegraph.

In a long clarification on their Sussex Royal website, the couple noted that while they would cease to use the brand name, “there is not any jurisdiction by the monarchy or Cabinet Office over the use of the word ‘royal’ overseas”.