The UK could formally apologise for the slave trade by next November, the Foreign Secretary said.

Ed Miliband MP was asked on the BBC’s Newscast podcast, broadcast on 4 November 2026, whether the government could reach an apology by the G20 summit it hosts in Manchester in November 2027. “Broadly speaking, yes,” he said. He ruled out reparations: “It’s not the right answer. It’s not practical. It’s not feasible for us, but there are things we can work on co-operatively.”

In their final communiqué on 4 November 2026, Commonwealth leaders welcomed the UK government’s agreement to “a structured, time-bound, inclusive and good-faith dialogue with affected parties”. The text, under a heading of “reparatory justice”, did not mention an apology or reparations.

Cayman is one of 10 territories on the UN’s decolonisation list that the UK administers. On 15 October, a UN General Assembly committee approved a resolution on the Cayman Islands by 159 votes to 2, and the UK abstained. On 9 October, CARICOM had told the same committee that decolonisation “must therefore extend from political status to economic opportunity, social justice, and reparatory justice”.

Mr Miliband said more than 3 million people were “shipped, really with the British state’s complicity, over a long period of time”, and that “hundreds of thousands of them didn’t make it and died”.

He said he had asked officials for a historical digest of Britain’s role. “Reading about the conditions on the ships and what happened to them when they arrived in the Caribbean and the Americas is really pretty harrowing,” he said.

Sorrow, no apology

He spoke the day after King Charles III opened the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in St John’s, Antigua and Barbuda. The King said the trade in enslaved people “still casts a shadow over these islands and other Members of our Commonwealth”.

“As I have said before, that shameful chapter of history is one that fills my heart with horror and my soul with the most profound personal sorrow,” he said. At the Kigali summit in 2022, he said he could not describe “the depths of my personal sorrow”.

“History is not ours to choose or to change,” the King said. He said “listening, learning and looking” had made him more committed to “finding ways for us to work in modern partnership to address the wrongs of the past with action for the future”, through education, jobs, trade and climate resilience. “Our history inspires us, can appall us, yet it can always teach us,” he said.

His speech did not mention an apology or reparations. A palace spokesperson said “it would not be appropriate” for the King to announce a change in government policy, AFP, the French news agency, reported.

The King also said “evil need not have the last word”, pointing to the effort to end the trade, “in which the Royal Navy played such a leading role”. He added that “here in the Caribbean, as in so many parts of our Commonwealth, climate change is not some distant prospect, it is an alarming reality”.

The Debate Over an Apology

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has said Britain should not apologise, arguing it would strengthen claims for compensation, AFP reported.

“Is it weak to do this? I think it’s the opposite of weak. I think fragile weak countries can’t face up to their past. I’m really proud of Britain, but being proud of your country is also being willing to face up to things you didn’t do, right?” Mr Miliband said.

He said he was told on his second day as Foreign Secretary that the last summit, in Samoa in 2024, “didn’t go well”. It ended in “a sort of verbal punch up” over slavery, he said. The issue had been “hanging around” the Commonwealth for about 20 years and had “grown and grown”.

“We thought it was right to confront this issue and not to just try and sort of pretend that it didn’t exist,” he said. The BBC reported that he and Mr Burnham hope the process will let the Commonwealth turn to other issues.

The host’s call for dialogue

Antigua and Barbuda’s Prime Minister, Gaston Browne, who took over as Commonwealth Chair-in-Office, told the opening ceremony that “fairness also requires an honest engagement with our shared history”.

He said leaders agreed in Samoa that “the time had come for a meaningful, truthful and respectful conversation on reparatory justice”.

“We must now carry that commitment forward through structured, inclusive dialogue on the enduring consequences of slavery and colonialism,” he said.

Mr Browne also called for faster access to climate finance and for debt arrangements that give vulnerable countries room to recover from disasters. “No nation should be forced to mortgage its future simply to survive the present,” he said. “Some question whether the Commonwealth remains relevant. Our answer must not rest on history or sentiment alone.” He added: “We may not agree on everything, but we must recognise that we can achieve far more through cooperation than through confrontation.”

The Commonwealth Secretariat’s account of the opening quoted both the King and Mr Browne at length, but included neither man’s remarks on slavery. Its Secretary-General, Shirley Botchwey, who is attending her first summit in charge, did not raise the subject in her own address.

No reparations, but a debt plan

Prime Minister Andy Burnham opened the door to an apology in The Guardian on 30 October. He wrote that Britain was “offering a structured dialogue with those affected by the transatlantic slave trade”.

He wrote that he was “open” to calls for a formal apology. He also wrote that “British people today” could not “be held liable for historical wrongs, however heinous”.

In Samoa, Commonwealth countries backed talks on reparatory justice after Britain, then led by Sir Keir Starmer, tried to keep the issue off the agenda, AFP reported. Mr Burnham has said he will have “difficult conversations” to safeguard the Commonwealth’s future.

“I’ve been very clear that we do not support reparations,” he told reporters on 3 November, AFP reported. He has said his government is pursuing a “new approach”, the agency reported.

Instead, the UK is pursuing a debt plan for the poorest Commonwealth countries, led by former prime minister Gordon Brown, that could change the interest rates on repayments, according to AFP. The UK is also allocating £40 million over three years to Caribbean infrastructure, the agency said.

Mr Burnham discussed the offer with Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley on 2 November. Downing Street said they covered how Britain “was offering a structured dialogue for communities impacted by the transatlantic slave trade”, including the next steps, AFP reported.

Asked whether the new approach would cost UK taxpayers “a penny more”, Mr Miliband said: “No.”

“Too many of our nations are held back by the rules on debt treatment and concessional funding,” Ms Botchwey told the opening ceremony. She said members were working on “a common platform” to change the international financial system.

“Our people will judge this meeting by what it delivers for them,” she told leaders.

She warned that a major El Niño was gathering force in the Pacific. She said “once again those who did the least to cause climate change stand to lose most from its shocks”.

A warm welcome from CARICOM

The chair of CARICOM’s Reparations Commission, Professor Sir Hilary Beckles, welcomed Mr Burnham in a video released by the CARICOM Secretariat on 2 November. “Prime Minister, we welcome you. We thank you for taking the high ground,” he said.

He called the offer of dialogue “an historic moment” and “an historic opportunity for a historic prime minister”. He noted Mr Burnham’s roots in Lancashire, which he said “was at the heart of this crime”.

In the same message, Sir Hilary said the UK had “produced multiple reasons in recent years why reparations should not be on the agenda”. He said: “Each one has been dismantled and dismissed.” He added: “The people of the Caribbean have said this is the number one item before us today.”

‘Sweet nothings’ in The Bahamas

The Bahamas National Reparations Committee criticised the King’s visit to The Bahamas, which ended on 29 October. It said he delivered “little more than sweet nothings”.

“We do not begrudge the pageantry or those who enjoyed it,” the committee said. But it added that “a warm welcome is not justice”.

The committee’s chair is Dr Niambi Hall Campbell-Dean, an associate professor at the University of The Bahamas. She sent the committee’s statement to TCJ.

In Nassau on 27 October, the King spoke of acknowledging “the great suffering and injustices of the past”. He told Bahamians: “Our world cries out for healing – the islands and cays, the beaches and mangroves.”

The committee took up the word. “The Crown cannot speak of healing while it refuses to face the legacy of chattel enslavement, colonial exploitation and racial injustice,” it said.

It reminded Bahamians that Britain borrowed money to compensate slave owners after the Slavery Abolition Act 1833. HM Treasury said in a 2018 freedom of information response that the loan was later rolled into the 4% Consolidated Loan, which was redeemed on 1 February 2015.

The committee also cited Operation CHASE. On 18 August 1970, the United States Army scuttled a ship carrying about 12,500 rockets filled with sarin nerve gas. It sank 282 miles east of Cape Kennedy, Florida, according to a history by Simone Müller of the University of Augsburg.

The committee said Bahamian officials protested at the time. “Bahamians still do not know the full ramifications of what was deposited in our waters,” it said. “Uncertainty itself is an injustice.”

It called on the King to “support a real process for repair”. “We need action equal to the scale of the harm inflicted,” it said.

“Reparations are not about guilt. They are about responsibility,” the committee said.

Cayman and the UN vote

At the UN, the CARICOM statement of 9 October was delivered by St Kitts and Nevis’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Dr Mutryce Williams. It noted that negotiations on a pre-independence constitution for the British Virgin Islands are under way.

The UN body is the General Assembly’s Fourth Committee, which deals with decolonisation. On 15 October, it approved the resolution on the British Virgin Islands by 157 votes to 2, with 5 abstentions. The Cayman resolution passed by 159 votes to 2, with 4 abstentions.

In 2023 and 2024, the committee approved the resolutions on each territory without a vote, according to UN records. This year, each went to a recorded vote.

The U.S. said it voted against every resolution under the item. It said the UN’s Special Committee on Decolonization “has outlived its original purpose”.

The UK abstained on every territory resolution, the UN said. Of the 17 territories on the UN’s list, the UK administers 10, including Cayman and the British Virgin Islands.

What happens next

The King’s nine-day tour took him to The Bahamas, Guyana and Antigua and Barbuda. He and Queen Camilla leave Antigua and Barbuda on 4 November.

The communiqué also noted the adoption of a UN General Assembly resolution declaring the trafficking of enslaved Africans “the Gravest Crime against Humanity”. The Commonwealth Secretariat said the summit raised more than US$500 million in new commitments, including for renewable energy, trade and skills for young people.

The summit meets every two years. The host country’s leader chairs it and becomes Commonwealth Chair-in-Office until the next meeting. The Commonwealth’s 56 member countries are home to 2.7 billion people, the Secretariat said.

Mr Miliband said the structured dialogue was likely to conclude within a year. The UN resolutions on Cayman and the other territories go to the full General Assembly for a final vote.