LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) — Prime Minister Andy Burnham said Saturday he was “open” to the UK issuing a formal apology for its role in the transatlantic slave trade, but ruled out financial reparations.

Writing in The Guardian days before attending a Commonwealth leaders summit in the Caribbean, and as King Charles III tours the region, the British premier argued that “we need to face up to the past”.

With London under pressure to formally apologise for its pivotal part in the trade and compensate Caribbean nations, he pledged to have “difficult conversations to safeguard the Commonwealth for the future”.

Burnham said he wanted to “express my sorrow and regret for the pain and suffering of so many millions and to recognise the way it still shapes our world today”, but insisted reparations were not “the right answer”.

“I do not think that British people today can be held liable for historical wrongs, however heinous, that happened in a different age under different laws and in which they played no personal part,” he wrote in the op-ed.

The transatlantic slave trade was a “brutal and barbaric violation” of enslaved people’s rights, the UK leader added, offering a “structured dialogue with those affected”.

“Listening to calls for a formal apology on behalf of the British state will form an important part of this process and I am open to them.”

Burnham also revealed he planned to launch a new debt restructuring drive for the poorest Commonwealth countries, led by former Labour prime minister Gordon Brown.

He vowed to work with “global partners” to help those countries repay “over a longer time period and with better rates”.

– ‘Suffering’ –

The issues around slavery have loomed large over King Charles’s ongoing nine-day visit to three Caribbean countries, which will include an address to the Commonwealth summit.

Burnham is also set to attend the gathering that runs from Sunday to Wednesday in St John’s, the capital of Antigua and Barbuda.

The 56-member Commonwealth — which Charles, 77, helms — is mainly composed of British ex-colonies, with the UK’s central role in slavery and the treatment of its former subjects long a contentious issue within the organisation.

In the Bahamas on Tuesday, the monarch acknowledged “the great suffering of the past” during the first leg of his visit.

Meanwhile in Guyana on Friday he visited an execution site of local people during British colonial rule, pausing to reflect in a gesture seen as indicating his awareness of that past injustice.

Britain has never formally apologised for slavery or agreed to pay reparations.

The country profited for centuries from colonialism and the slave trade, but argues it also led the way in the latter’s abolition.

In 1833, the UK parliament passed a law to abolish slavery in most of the British Empire.

Denis O’Brien, founder of The Repair Campaign, which advocates for reparations for slavery for Caribbean nations, said London “must stop obfuscating and give a full and formal apology now”.

“This would be a significant and symbolic first step towards reparatory justice,” he added.

However UK Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said Saturday there was “no need” to revisit the issue of formally saying sorry, while reiterating her firm opposition to reparations.

She urged the Commonwealth to “look forward” and “not endlessly backwards”.

“Slavery was an evil in which people from every continent and region participated,” she wrote on X.

“We should be honest about the whole history, not select the parts that are politically convenient today.”