Minister says UK apology over historic role in slave trade won’t lead to financial reparations – UK politics live

Ahead of a meeting with Commonwealth leaders, Andy Burnham wrote that Britain needed to ‘acknowledge its complicated history’Just to turn back to the budget for now, and I’ll recap John Healey’s interview on Kuennsberg’s show for the next few posts.The conversation was the usual tussle, a back and forth, on trying to get the chancellor to commit to specific timing for when the really tough decisions on spending will kick in. Healey, who was defence minister at the start of the year, re-iterated the 3% of GDP commitment on defence spending. But where will that money be found?A series of British kings and queens were leaders and investors in the trafficking of enslaved African people;More than 100 MPs were investors in slave-trading companies, including scores in the Tory and Whig parties – the forerunners of today’s Conservatives and Liberal Democrats;Dozens of directors and original financiers of the Bank of England were investors in the slave trade;More than 1,000 women invested in slave-trading companies;Forty-five Church of England clergymen were investors in the slave-trading Royal African Company. Continue reading...