The UK “can’t change our history”, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has told the BBC when asked about paying reparations to countries impacted by the transatlantic slave trade.

His comments come after diplomatic sources told the BBC that Commonwealth heads of government want to start a “meaningful conversation” about an issue that could mean the UK paying billions of pounds for its historical role in the trade.

Sir Keir, who is currently in Samoa for a meeting of Commonwealth countries, said the trade was “abhorrent” and that it was important to “talk about our history”.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves ruled out making payments, in an interview earlier on Thursday, saying “that’s not something that this government is doing”.

However, he added that the focus should be on “today’s challenges” including resilience in the face of climate change and boosting trade between Commonwealth nations.

He added he wanted to help member countries work with international financial institutions to “unlock money that might help them” in relation to climate change.

Leaders from 56 countries are attending the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting taking place in Samoa on Friday and Saturday.

Commonwealth leaders are expected to defy the UK and debate ways of securing reparations for historical slavery. At its height, Britain was the world’s biggest slave-trading nation. Downing Street has the issue is not on the agenda for the summit.

Reparatory justice for slavery can come in many forms, including financial reparations, debt relief, an official apology, educational programmes, building museums, economic support, and public health assistance.

In the run-up to the summit, there have been growing calls from Commonwealth leaders for the UK to apologise and make reparations.

King Charles will formally open the summit and is expected to use his opening speech to pay tribute to his mother the late Queen Elizabeth II and her connection to the Commonwealth.

He will also say the Commonwealth’s scale and diversity allows it to “discuss the most challenging issues with openness and respect”.

During the gathering, a new Commonwealth secretary general will be elected. All three of the candidates – Shirley Botchwey of Ghana, Joshua Setipa of Lesotho and Mamadou Tangara of Gambia – back reparatory justice.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Frederick Mitchell, the foreign minister of the Bahamas, said he believed the UK would change its stance, saying: “It may take a while for people to come around but come around they will.”

During the interview with the BBC, Sir Keir was also asked about a complaint Donald Trump’s team has filed against the Labour Party objecting to its staff and activists volunteering for Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign.

“I think this needs to be seen for what it is,” the prime minister said, adding: “It is some Labour Party members and staff in their free time campaigning.

“It’s happened in every election in different parts of the world. All political parties do it… I think it needs to be put in it’s proper perspective.”

Sir Keir added that both he and Trump wanted to have a “good working relationship” and that the pair recently had dinner together.

He dismissed suggestions that his party were still adjusting to being in government, saying he had “absolute clarity” on his “number one mission” of economic growth.

Next Wednesday Chancellor Rachel Reeves, will set out the government’s tax and spending plans in the Budget.

Ahead of this Reeves told the BBC she would be changing the government’s self-imposed debt rules to free up money for infrastructure spending.

Asked about the Budget, Sir Keir said the economy barely grew under the Conservatives and that he wanted to “clear the decks” and “clear up the mess”.

“I believe in running towards problems. If you know what the problem is, what the challenge is, every business knows this, every family knows it, run towards it and fix it.”

The Conservatives have challenged Labour’s argument that they created a £22bn black hole in the economy and questioned the chancellor’s decision to change the debt rules.

The party’s shadow Treasury minister Gareth Davies said “uncertainty over additional borrowing risks interest rates staying higher and for longer.

“It’s families up and down the country who would pay the price.”

Calls for the UK to provide reparations for its historic role in the slave trade have reignited ahead of a meeting of Commonwealth countries on Friday.

While Sir Keir Starmer said reparatory justice would not be on the agenda, Commonwealth leaders have defied the prime minister and plan to move towards a “meaningful conversation” on the issue.

The UK has long faced calls to provide reparations for its role in the Atlantic slave trade which saw millions of Africans enslaved and forced to work, largely on plantations in the Caribbean and Americas.

The chancellor told the BBC the UK would not be “paying out” reparations – but might there be other forms of reparations to consider, and how likely is it that the UK would commit to them?

Reparations are measures to make amends for past actions deemed wrong or unfair.

From 1500, the British government and the monarchy were prominent participants in the centuries-long slave trade, alongside other European nations.

Britain also had a key role in ending the trade, through Parliament’s passage of a law to abolish slavery in 1833.

As part of that law, British plantation owners were paid for the loss of their slaves, to the tune of some £20m.

The UK only finished paying off the debt it incurred to cover the payments in 2015.

Reparations for the benefit of those who suffered as result of slavery can take many forms, from financial to symbolic.

The United Nations says they must be “proportional to the gravity of the violations and the harm suffered”.

Here are some of the forms they can take.

This is the most commonly understood form of reparatory justice – where a state gives money to a country whose communities it enslaved.

A 2023 report co-authored by a United Nations’ judge concluded that the UK owed more than £18tn to 14 countries in reparations.

The difficulty is that most European countries would struggle to find sums as astronomic as that.

The UK government, for example, spends a total of about £1.2tn every year.

Even if governments could find the money, it would be politically unpopular to spend so much on reparations and consequently less on schools and hospitals at home.

Some campaigners answer these points by saying reparations could be paid over time.

But many demands for straight cash payments are considered unfeasible by Western governments.

So for others, the debate about financial reparations often focuses instead on the question of debt relief.

Many developing countries which suffered from slavery owe large sums to Western countries.

The cancellation or reduction of that debt could lift a massive economic burden from a developing country at little political cost for a donor country.

On the face of it, this could appear relatively straightforward.

It does not cost anything, just a public act of atonement for past sins.

Some institutions – such as the Church of England – have apologised for links to slavery.

The difficulty, though, is that apologies can sometimes act as a declaration of legal responsibility for which there could be a financial cost.

Which is why states are often reluctant to take that step.

Earlier this week, former Prime Minister Tony Blair suggested it was wrong for states to apologise for historic wrongs – despite himself saying “sorry” in 2007.

“You can go back over history, and you end up in a completely absurd position”, he told Newsweek on Wednesday.

“The most important thing we can do for countries that have been marked by colonialism is to help them now.”

Few states that played a historic role in the slave trade have taken steps towards reparations.

This includes educational institutions acknowledging their own connection to slavery and how they might have profited from the slave trade.

It can also involve teaching the history of slavery, as well as creating institutions for the study of slavery.

There are also calls for supporting schools to tackle low literacy levels and other issues that some argue date back to the slave trade.

Some campaigners say school exchanges and cultural tours would also be beneficial.

The countries pushing hardest for reparatory justice from the UK are in the Caribbean – and their collective organisation, known as Caricom, has its own reparations commission with 10 demands.

Three of these deal explicitly with education and culture, saying a “restoration of historical memory” was required.

Caricom said states involved in the slave trade had a responsibility to “build educational capacity and provide scholarships”.

Some argue that reparatory justice should also include health – where European countries fund clinics and hospitals.

Medical evidence shows a high rate of type 2 diabetes in the Caribbean which some suggest is associated with centuries of poor nutrition due to past enslavement.

Historian Sir Hilary Beckles told the United Nations’s UN News earlier this year: “If you look at countries with the greatest incidence of chronic diseases, black people have the highest proportions of diabetic adult patients in the world.”

He argued high rates of diabetes on his own island of Barbados “cannot be a coincidence” given it was “the first island to have an African majority and an enslaved population”.

Barbados’ government has moved toward exploring the historic impact of slavery on its population’s health.

Caricom is calling for European countries to invest in science, technology and capital toward improving hospitals, healthcare, and mental health support for the descendants of enslaved people.

The UK government has never formally apologised for slavery or offered to pay reparations – and Sir Keir Starmer has not shown any intention to break the mould.

It is not Labour Party policy to introduce reparations.

Ahead of the Commonwealth summit, the prime minister explicitly said he would not provide an apology or financial compensation for slavery.

He said he wanted to focus on present issues, like the climate, rather than the past.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves doubled down on Thursday afternoon, insisting the UK would not be paying reparations.

“I’d rather roll up my sleeves and work… on the current future-facing challenges than spend a lot of time on the past”, she said.

In 2023, then Prime Minister Rishi Sunak likewise refused to provide compensation or an apology for the slave trade.

“Trying to unpick our history is not the right way forward”, he said.

Nigel Farage has called on Conservative county councillors to defect to his Reform UK party.

In a letter obtained by the BBC, party leader Farage warns Tory councillors Reform’s “ground campaign capabilities will be formidable” by May’s local elections.

Speaking on X, Farage, who is also MP for Clacton in Essex, said he was writing to 1,352 Conservative county councillors as “a huge number of them genuinely agree with us and what we stand for”.

A Conservative party spokesman said: “Reform has delivered a Labour government. A vote for Reform this coming May is a vote for a Labour council.”

In a letter sent to Essex Conservative county councillors, Farage says “our door is open should you consider standing for Reform UK”.

Farage told them since the general election “we’ve been assembling a national election winning machine at historic speed with hundreds of branches already established and over 90,000 active members ready to campaign”.

He has given Conservative councillors until 6 November to join and warns there will be a Reform candidate standing against them.

“Once somebody has been selected, we will not stand them down,” he wrote.

Farage said there were “other councillors in talks with us” after two Southend councillors defected from the Conservatives in September.

Conservative Kevin Bentley, leader of Essex County Council, said Farage’s letter “does smack of desperation”.

He said: “Some members have had a message from Reform and dismissed it.”

A former Conservative councillor who was briefly a general election candidate has joined Reform UK.

Jaymey McIvor, who represents Ongar on Essex County Council, announced on X that he had joined Farage’s party.

The Conservatives said McIvor was expelled from the party on 9 October following a disciplinary hearing.

McIvor said he had already quit and that he had joined Reform UK as it “puts people and country first”.

He accused the Conservative Party of being “too weak to deal with its handful of toxic individuals” and they “tried to punish my ambition and vision”.

He said: “Reform has won the trust of the next generation. We are the future, we want our country back on track, rescuing it from the unpatriotic minority and put the patriotic majority back in the driver’s seat.”

McIvor was selected to stand for the Conservatives in Hemel Hempstead in the general election. But hours from the deadline for nominations to be submitted he was dropped and suspended by the party pending an investigation.

A Conservative spokesperson said: “Mr McIvor was suspended by the party and removed from the candidates list in June.

“After a disciplinary hearing, he was expelled from the Conservative Party on 9 October.”

McIvor says he will “continue to serve my residents” as a Reform UK councillor on both Essex County Council and Epping Forest District Council.

Elections for Essex County Council are due to be held in May 2025.

Earlier this year, McIvor posted on X: “For every person that joins Reform UK , they become another campaigner for a Labour government, which would achieve the polar opposite to what they want to see changed.”

A spokesperson for Reform UK said: “We believe James McIvor has been the victim of vicious Tory infighting.

“We look forward to announcing many more councillors joining us in Essex from the Tory sinking ship.”

The UK is “not going to be paying out” reparations for the transatlantic slave trade, Chancellor Rachel Reeves has told the BBC.

She said she understood why Commonwealth leaders would be making such demands but it was not something the UK government would commit to.

The legacy of slavery will be raised by the leaders at their summit in Samoa, which Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer is attending.

Ahead of Friday’s meeting, he said he wanted to discuss current challenges, especially climate change, rather than issues of the past.

“That’s where I’m going to put my focus – rather than what will end up being very, very long endless discussions about reparations,” he said.

“Of course slavery is abhorrent to everybody; the trade and the practice, there’s no question about that. But I think from my point of view… I’d rather roll up my sleeves and work… on the current future-facing challenges.”

The chancellor reiterated that message in an interview with the BBC, saying: “We’re not going to be paying out the reparations that some countries are speaking about.

“I understand why they make those demands but that’s not something that this government is doing.”

Commonwealth leaders at the Samoa summit are expected to defy the UK and debate ways of securing reparations for historical slavery. At its height, Britain was the world’s biggest slave-trading nation.

Downing Street insists the issue is not on the agenda for the summit of 56 Commonwealth countries.

But diplomatic sources said officials were negotiating an agreement to conduct further research and begin a “meaningful conversation” about an issue which could potentially leave the UK owing billions of pounds in reparations.

Frederick Mitchell, foreign minister of the Bahamas, believes the UK could change its stance and he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Once you broach the subject it may take a while for people to come around but come around they will.”

Reparatory justice for slavery can come in many forms, including financial reparations, debt relief, an official apology, educational programmes, building museums, economic support, and public health assistance.

Mr Mitchell told the Commonwealth gathering: “It’s a simple matter – it can be done, one sentence, one line.”

He said to the BBC: “The word is apologise, that’s the word.”

Asked how much reparations should amount to, he said it was not just a matter of money but of “respect, acknowledging the past was a wrong that needs to be corrected”.

He said member countries “want the conversation to start” but “there appears to be even a reluctance to have the conversation”.

Earlier, a UK government spokesperson said: “Reparations are not on the agenda for the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting. The government’s position has not changed – we do not pay reparations.

“We are focused on using the summit at [the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting] to discuss the shared opportunities which we can unlock across the Commonwealth – including securing more economic growth.”

It is understood the Downing Street position – that reparatory justice is not on the agenda – while technically correct, has angered some Caribbean ministers when it was obvious the issue would be discussed at the summit.

King Charles is in Samoa for a four-day visit and is due to formally open Friday’s summit.

On a visit to Kenya last year, the King expressed the “greatest sorrow and regret” over the “wrongdoings” of the colonial era, but stopped short of issuing an apology, which would have required the agreement of ministers.

Some non-Caribbean countries are not unsympathetic towards the British position and want the summit to focus more on existing challenges – such as climate change, which is adversely affecting many Commonwealth countries, about half of whom are small island states.

But Caribbean countries seem determined to keep pressing the issue.

All three candidates hoping to be elected this weekend as the next secretary general of the Commonwealth – Shirley Botchwey of Ghana, Joshua Setipa of Lesotho and Mamadou Tangara of Gambia – have made clear they support reparatory justice.

Councillors in England will be allowed to take part in debates from home using their computers, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner has announced.

At the moment all local councillors are required by law to attend certain meetings in person.

The rules were suspended during the Covid pandemic, which led to Parish Council officer Jackie Weaver briefly becoming a social media sensation.

The Zoom meeting she was chairing in early 2021 erupted into fury, with Ms Weaver being told she had “no authority here” after she kicked two councillors out of the meeting.

The law change allowing council meetings to be held remotely expired on 6 May 2021.

At the time, Ms Weaver joined calls to keep virtual meetings as an option, saying scrapping them would be a “dreadful idea”.

Under the proposed new rules, councillors will also be allowed to vote on behalf of others who can’t attend debates, such as for childcare or health reasons.

Rayner told local government chiefs it would be up to them to “decide whether councillors should attend your meetings remotely or use proxy votes when they need to”.

Speaking at the Local Government Association’s (LGA) annual conference in Harrogate, the deputy prime minister said she would “[make] it possible for people from all walks of life to have a stake in local democracy, whether they have caring responsibilities or aren’t able to make it to the town hall in person because of illness or disability”.

The government has published a public consultation on the proposals.

Last year an LGA survey of around a third of English councils found nine in 10 had councillors who would make use of virtual meetings if allowed.

It comes as Whitehall civil servants were told they should be spending at least three days a week working in the office.

Councillors will no longer have to make their home addresses public, Rayner also confirmed.

The LGA had previously pushed for ending the legal obligation to publish addresses amid a rise in abuse and intimidation faced by local councillors.

Rayner, who is also the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, said she would allow councils to suspend local councillors for bad behaviour.

She said she had been occasionally been “made aware of cases of persistent bullying and harassment by councillors, even in some case leading to victims resignations”.

Rayner also reiterated that the government will return to giving councils multi-year funding settlements.

The Conservatives had been agreeing funding on a yearly basis, which councils said made it hard to plan their budgets.

She also said she will end local authorities having to compete against each other for government grants.

But there was no hint that any more money might be in store for cash-strapped councils in the Budget next week.

One in four councils say they are likely to need an emergency bailout from the government within the next two years without more cash now.