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

While Sir Keir Starmer said reparatory fairness would not be on the agenda, Commonwealth leaders have defied the prime minister and schedule to shift towards a “meaningful exchange” 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 history actions deemed incorrect 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 setback of their slaves, to the tune of some £20m.

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

Reparations for the advantage of those who suffered as outcome of slavery can receive many forms, from monetary to symbolic.

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

Here are some of the forms they can receive.

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

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

The hardship is that most European countries would battle to discover sums as astronomic as that.

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

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

Some campaigners respond these points by saying reparations could be paid over period.

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

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

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

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

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

It does not expense anything, just a community act of atonement for history sins.

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

The hardship, though, is that apologies can sometimes act as a declaration of legal responsibility for which there could be a monetary expense.

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

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

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

“The most significant thing we can do for countries that have been marked by colonialism is to assist 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 debate date back to the slave trade.

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

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

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

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

Some debate that reparatory fairness should also include health – where European countries capital clinics and hospitals.

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

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

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 back 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 shatter the mould.

It is not Labour event policy to introduce reparations.

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

He said he wanted to focus on now issues, like the climate, rather than the history.

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 upcoming-facing challenges than spend a lot of period on the history”, 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 correct way forward”, he said.