Downing Street today rebuffed calls for Britain to hand out billions of pounds in slavery reparations today ahead of a major Commonwealth summit later this month.
A group of Caribbean governments wants to discuss their demand for cash at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Samoa next week.
The prime minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley, is leading demands from West Indies nations, saying reparations for slavery and colonialism should be part of a new ‘global reset’.
But No10 said today that reparations were ‘not on the agenda’ and the Government would not pay them anyway.
It comes as Ms Mottley faces questions over her country’s links to China where the UN has reported the forced labour of members of minority groups.
Asked about the demand, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: ‘Just to be clear, reparations are not on the agenda for the Commonwealth heads of government meeting.
‘Technically, the Government’s position on this has not changed. We do not pay reparations.
‘The Prime Minister is attending the summit to discuss the shared challenges and opportunities faced by the Commonwealth, including driving growth across our economies.’
Barbados and China have close trading links and the island is part of Beijing’s ‘belt and road initiative’, a global infrastructure programme.
The Mail on Sunday also said Ms Mottley has described her country as ‘the home of modern racism’ thanks to British rule from 1625.
She has said Barbados is owed $4.9trillion (£3.9trillion) by former slave-owning nations.
Ms Mottley has praised previous comments by King Charles, who said acknowledging the wrongs of the past was a ‘conversation whose time has come’.
But Tory grandee and China hawk Sir Iain Duncan Smith told the Mail: ‘It is utterly ironic that countries that bend the knee to China and take the ”belt and road” money turn a blind eye to the fact that China is now probably the biggest user of slavery in its production lines and its products.
‘It is a country that is committing genocide in Xinjiang amongst the Uyghurs, and persecutes Christians and practises forced organ harvesting on organisations like Falun Gong and Christians.
‘So how ironic that people should call on us to pay them, when they are busy cosying up on their knees to China in the hope of more money from an appalling, abusive nation that has one of the worst records in history in abuse and political execution.’