'Time is right' to apologise

'Time is right' to apologise for Child Migrants Programme, says Gordon Brown. Gordon Brown is to apologise for Britain's ' disgraceful' role in sending more than 130,000 children to its former colonies.

Under the Child Migrants Programme, poverty-stricken youngsters were compulsorily deported to Australia, Canada and other distant parts of the Empire.

Most children were wrongly told that their parents had died and that they would enjoy a 'better life' outside Britain, while the parents thought the children had been adopted in Britain.

Child migrants: Ten-year-old twins Brian Thomas Sullivan (left) and Kevin James Sullivan from Islington, London carry their luggage to the boat train "Rangitoto" as they left Liverpool Street station in London in 1950

But many were physically, psychologically and sexually abused, or ended up in institutions or as labourers on farms.

The Prime Minister has pledged to say sorry to the victims of the policy, which ended only 40 years ago, but the move has been condemned as coming too late.

Critics said he had been 'shamed' into it by Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd, who today apologised for his country's role in the mistreatment and suffering of 500,000 people held in orphanages and children's homes between 1930 and 1970.

Gordon Brown will issue a formal apology in the new year, according to Kevin Barron (r), the chairman of the health select committee which has been investigating the programme

That includes 7,000 child migrants from Britain who still live in Australia.

Gordon Brown said in a letter to Kevin Barron, Labour chairman of the Commons health select committee, which has investigated the scandal, that 'the time is now right' to apologise.

Kevin Rudd has formally apologised to the 7,000 child migrants from Britain who live still in Australia

He wrote: 'After consultation with organisations directly involved with child migrants we are going to make an apology early in the new year.'

But Margaret Humphreys, a former Nottinghamshire social worker who set up the Child Migrants Trust in 1987,

said: 'The Australian government is delivering an apology when the British Government has done nothing.

'This is disgusting. They have abandoned us. There is a huge feeling here that we are being abandoned by Gordon Brown.'

Harold Haig, the secretary of the International Child Migrants Association, said:

'Gordon Brown should hang his head in shame.

'He is allowing the country that we were deported to to apologise before the country where we were born.'

A Government spokesman said: ' We plan to make a more detailed announcement early in the new year.' ( dailymail.co.uk )