Downing Street has ruled out paying reparations for Britain's role in the transatlantic slave trade, after a Jamaican delegation visited Buckingham Palace to lodge a petition seeking acknowledgment of historic wrongs and compensation. The move comes amid a wider push by reparations campaigners, backed by several Labour MPs, and sets up a clash of views ahead of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Summit in the Caribbean in November, which both the King and Andy Burnham are due to attend.

Campaigners are seeking £7.6 billion, with Jamaican minister Olivia Grange arguing that Britain's £20 million payout to slave owners in 1833 — a debt not paid off until 2015 — creates an ongoing duty to compensate descendants of the enslaved. The petition asks King Charles, as Jamaica's head of state, to refer questions to the Privy Council on whether slavery breached English and international law and whether redress is now owed, though the King has no personal say in whether it proceeds. The Prime Minister's spokesman said Britain acknowledges the "wrongs of the past" but "does not and will not pay reparations", while former Supreme Court judge Lord Sumption dismissed the legal claim as "nonsense", suggesting campaigners were exploiting British "self-doubt and guilt".