Between 1949 and 1976, approximately 185,000 babies were taken from unmarried mothers in England and Wales and placed for adoption. The women were not criminals. They were not neglectful. They were unmarried, and that was enough. Councils, churches, hospitals and adoption agencies pressured them to surrender their children because the country treated single motherhood as a moral failure. Some women were told their babies had died. Some were never told anything at all.
Keir Starmer stood in the Commons today and apologised on behalf of the state. He met campaigners at Downing Street this morning before making the statement. Scotland and Wales apologised in 2023. The Church of England apologised in June 2026, acknowledging it had operated or been affiliated with more than 200 mother and baby homes during the period. Canada, Australia, Ireland and Northern Ireland have all issued formal apologies. Westminster has taken longer than any of them.
The Education Committee called for the apology in March 2026, after receiving evidence that practices associated with forced adoption happened before 1949 and continued after the Adoption Act 1976. The Joint Committee on Human Rights recommended an apology in 2022. That is four years between recommendation and delivery. For the mothers, some of whom are now in their seventies and eighties, the urgency was not academic.
An apology without records access, support services and a redress scheme is a speech.
The Church of England has committed to a financial redress scheme opening in late 2026, with payouts capped at £660,000 in exceptional cases. The government has not announced an equivalent. An apology without records access, support services and a redress scheme is a speech. The mothers did not wait half a century for a speech. They waited for acknowledgment that what happened to them was wrong, that the state was responsible, and that something would be done about the consequences that are still being lived with today.
Starmer did something decent. Whether the government does something meaningful depends on what follows the applause.