Gordon Brown calls for formal apology to women forced into adoptions

Gordon Brown has called on the government to issue a formal apology to women whose babies were forcibly adopted in the 1950s, 60s and 70s.

- Harriet Sherwood

The former Labour prime minister said the state should apologise for its role in the "terrible tragedy" of forced adoptions involving about 200,000 women.

Karen Constantine of the Movement for an Adoption Apology (MAA) told the Guardian in February: "The value of an apology would be immensely healing and resolve unimaginable pain endured for decades by an ageing cohort of women who had their babies taken from them."