Miliband says slavery apology will not bring costs for UK taxpayer

Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband has insisted the government's willingness to consider formally apologising for the UK's role in the transatlantic slave trade will not lead to higher costs for the British taxpayer. The prime minister has said the UK will not pay reparations to affected countries, but has declined to say whether the new approach could involve additional taxpayer money. Speaking on the BBC's Newscast podcast, Miliband said previous British governments had taken a "sweep it under the carpet" attitude to the pain and consequences of slavery. He cited what he described as former Prime Minister Sir Tony Blair's "sorry not sorry" remarks on the issue nearly two decades ago. In 2007, Sir Tony said the UK's involvement in the slave trade was a matter of "deep sorrow and regret". "Tony Blair did sort of do a kind of sorry not sorry situation. He kind of expressed sorrow, and then said sorry, and then it was walked back by number 10," Miliband said. He added that the former prime minister's approach was still referred to and came up recently in a conversation between Andy Burnham and the Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley. Miliband also said he and Burnham had inherited a more recent problem in how the last Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) played out in Samoa two years ago. "On the second day as my time as foreign secretary, I was told, 'look, one of your tasks is CHOGM 2024, which happened in Samoa, didn't go well,'" he said. "To use sort of diplomatic speak, it ended up in a sort of punch up, a sort of verbal punch up about this whole issue." He said the issue had been hanging around the Commonwealth for roughly 20 years, and had grown and grown. Given that history, Miliband said, "we thought it was right to confront this issue and not to just try and sort of pretend that it didn't exist". Burnham has now said the government is open to formally apologising for slavery. Ministers are beginning what they call a "structured dialogue" with affected countries, with the expectation that an apology may come at around the time the prime minister hosts the G20 Summit in Manchester in November 2027. Defending the approach, Miliband rejected suggestions it showed weakness. "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," he said. He said he had asked to be provided with a historical digest of the UK's involvement in the slave trade, describing how more than three million people were shipped with the British state's complicity over a couple of centuries, with hundreds of thousands dying on the journey. Reading about conditions on the ships and what awaited survivors in the Caribbean and the Americas, he said, was "really pretty harrowing". The King, meanwhile, has described the slave trade as a "shameful chapter" during a Commonwealth address, though the Palace has stressed that his role is not policy making amid the slavery apology debate. The government hopes the process will formally address the past and create space for the Commonwealth to turn its attention to other matters.