John Healey says UK apology for slave trade would not lead to financial reparations

Summary

Ahead of a meeting with Commonwealth leaders, Andy Burnham wrote that Britain needed to 'acknowledge its complicated history'. In an interview with Laura Kuenssberg at Number 11 Downing Street, John Healey was asked whether the UK should apologise for its role in the slave trade and whether it should pay reparations to enslaved people and their countries. Healey said that considering a formal apology did not mean accepting financial liability for things that happened hundreds of years ago, in which people today had no role. The report notes that British ships trafficked more than three million enslaved Africans between the 1560s and 1807, and that 800,000 enslaved people were still on British plantations when slavery was abolished in 1833. Abolition was achieved after the government compensated enslavers rather than the enslaved, and the loan used to pay for that was only paid off in 2015. Britain has never paid compensation or reparations to the people who were enslaved or to their countries.

Timeline

1. The Guardian

   1 Nov 2026, 14:09 UTCSource ↗

   The Guardian's live UK politics blog reports that John Healey said a formal UK apology over the slave trade would not lead to financial reparations.