Sir Keir Starmer stood before the House of Commons today and told the mothers who had their babies taken from them that the shame is not theirs. ‘The shame was never yours. The shame is ours,’ the Prime Minister said, addressing campaigners in the gallery above the chamber. ‘And I say on behalf of the whole country, I say it to every single person impacted, we are deeply and profoundly sorry.’
The formal apology came after decades of campaigning by an estimated 185,000 mothers, adoptees and families affected by forced adoption in the UK. Between 1949 and 1976, unmarried women were pressured by official bodies into giving up their children because they were not married. The practices, carried out in local authorities, voluntary and faith-based institutions, and health and social care services, left a legacy of trauma. Children grew up believing they were unwanted, while young mothers were told they were immoral and that their babies were better off without them.
“Keir Starmer formally apologises in Parliament for UK's forced adoption practices, calling it a 'stain on our history'.”
The Prime Minister described the practices as a ‘stain on our history’. Those organisations, he said, ‘operated with power over people’s lives, yet they did so without compassion, without consent, and without dignity or proper safeguards’.
Earlier today, Starmer met campaigners, including some of the mothers and adult adoptees, in Downing Street. The apology followed years of pressure from them and their wider families, and came after the Scottish and Welsh governments issued their own formal apologies in March and April 2023. An Education Committee inquiry report had also recommended an urgent apology.
Former Labour MP Ann Keen, who was forced to give up her baby aged 17 in 1966, told the BBC’s Today programme she looked forward to ‘being released from my shame’ by the apology. ‘We all need this apology because we have always been accused of giving up our babies and we didn’t give them up,’ she said.
To accompany the apology, Starmer announced the government would improve access to adoption records and set up a national online resource to help locate them, alongside a number of other measures. For the mothers and children who lived through it, the question remains whether an apology, however profound, can undo the damage of a system that told them their shame was their own.