Historical Forced Adoption

Olivia Blake Excerpts

Thursday 2nd July 2026 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Yes, we can and should say that, and I thank the right hon. Member for reminding us that this is not all about the past. If we mean what we say, we have to tackle the present as well. I was struck not just by the dogmatic adherence to views at the time, but the complete lack of empathy, the complete lack of feeling. That is something else. That goes beyond dogma; that is just how human beings treat each other. I have had examples described to me of individual human beings dehumanising other individual human beings, when they did not have to. They chose to act in that way, adding even more grief and pain to what was an awful injustice in any event.

As for the uploading of stories, there will be the facility for testimonials to be there—obviously, only if people want to share them. We are looking at how that could be done.

[Olivia Blake (Sheffield Hallam) (Lab)]

I thank the Prime Minister wholeheartedly for this apology. Everyone present can see the pain, and the real need for this. I want to ask quite a technical point about the national online resource. Families often end up paying huge amounts of money to try to locate family members. Often, DNA is a way that people are reunited. Is that something that has been considered, in terms of the online resource, in order to help people reunite with family members in cases where records have been lost, heavily redacted or withheld?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising this. We are working with all those affected, and with the families. precisely on the issue of ensuring that all the relevant information is put together. It is a difficult job, because it is held in different places in different ways. I cannot stand here and pretend that all the information is available, and that we simply have to get it in one place. It will take a lot of work to get it all there, and some of it may not be retrievable, but we will do everything we can to ensure that it is as complete as possible, as quickly as possible.