Brown calls for child migrant redress scheme to be extended
FORMER PRIME Minister Gordon Brown has called for the child migration redress scheme to be extended.
In a statement read out to the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry yesterday, Mr Brown said the payment scheme should continue because not all child migrants may yet have come forward.
Mr Brown was Prime Minister in 2010 when he made an apology on behalf of the nation for the child migrant programme, involving more than 130,000 poor children and those in care being sent overseas, mainly to Australia and Canada, where many reported suffering physical and sexual abuse.
In his statement, Mr Brown said: “I recognise that the abuse of vulnerable Scottish child migrants
and the damage that was inflicted deserves separate investigation and I applaud the work being done by the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry to address this.
“I’m told that all Scottish child migrants known to the Child Migrants Trust have now received a redress payment. But there will still be migrants not yet in contact with the Child Migrants Trust.”
Suggesting that the inquiry might want to make concrete recommendations about extending the redress payments, he said: “The redress scheme should certainly not have justified any reduction in it, or limit time to support for the Child Migrant Trust and for the travel scheme.”
His submission was the final piece of evidence in the latest inquiry phase examining child migration programmes, ahead of closing statements for that phase being heard on October 20.
The inquiry’s first public hearings before Lady Smith took place in 2017.