Australia apologises to child migrants
Updated on 15 November 2009
Gordon Brown and Australian premier Kevin Rudd are to apologise for the suffering endured by poor children shipped from the UK to Australia and other former colonies.
The child migrants programme ended 40 years ago.
Mr Brown is likely to make a statement in the new year and say sorry for the UK's role in sending thousands of its children to former colonies.
The chairman of the health select committee, Kevin Barron, which has looked into what happened, said Mr Brown wrote to him this weekend to confirm he would issue an apology.
The prime minister told him "the time is now right" for the UK government to apologise for the actions of previous governments.
"It is important that we take the time to listen to the voices of the survivors and victims of these misguided policies," Mr Brown wrote.
In his national apology to the Forgotten Australians tomorrow, Mr Rudd will recognise the mistreatment and continued suffering of some 500,000 people held in orphanages or children's homes between 1930 and 1970.
He will combine it with an apology to the 7,000 child migrants from Britain who still live in Australia.
As they were shipped out of Britain, the children were separated from their families and many were told - wrongly - they were orphans, while the parents were told that they had gone to a better life.
But most were brought up in institutions, or by farmers, and many were treated as child slave labour.
The Australian government will formally apologise at a special remembrance event in Canberra, where Mr Rudd will say sorry on behalf of the nation to those who suffered cruelty and hardship including physical, psychological and sexual abuse.
