The British government has issued an apology for the decades-long practice of burying stillborn babies in communal graves without the knowledge or consent of their parents. Health Secretary Yvette Cooper addressed the House of Commons during a baby loss awareness debate on Tuesday to offer the formal remorse.
Between the 1930s and the early 1980s, mothers who lost babies in National Health Service hospitals were often given no say in what happened to the remains. Parents were routinely denied information regarding where their children had been taken. This left many families to spend decades searching for answers.
Records show that more than 1,000 stillborn babies were interred in communal plots across the Wirral at Frankby, Plymyard and Landican cemeteries between 1935 and 1981. A separate mass burial ground located in Royton, Oldham, is believed to contain the remains of more than 270 babies.
Gina Jacobs, a campaigner from the Wirral whose son Robert was stillborn in 1969, spent 53 years searching for his final resting place before discovering the truth. She joined other affected families in pushing the government for official recognition of the historical scandal.
Cooper told parliament that she wanted to offer an apology on behalf of the government to all those affected. She said she had spoken directly with Jacobs to express her regret for the unthinkable pain caused by the historic practices.
The health secretary stated that what happened to those parents should never have occurred and stressed the need to ensure the practices are never repeated. Jacobs told ITV News that the ministerial acknowledgement felt monumental after years of campaigning.
Jacobs stated that she had begged anyone who would listen for four years and that hearing the apology directly from the minister felt like winning the lottery. She added that the recognition brings dignity and respect to the babies and the missing infants who lacked it at the time.
Pressure on Westminster mounted in July when Liverpool City Council unanimously passed a cross-party motion calling for a parliamentary apology. The motion described the historical handling of stillborn babies by public authorities as a cruel violation of human dignity that generated decades of unresolved trauma for families.
Councillor Kris Brown, who introduced the Liverpool motion, welcomed the ministerial statement and said the acknowledgement brings a sense of closure and justice for many. However, he urged the government to follow the words with a written apology and a national framework for family support.
The council has also pressed the government to allocate national funding to recover lost burial records and conduct a comprehensive review of the mass burials that occurred across multiple successive administrations. Brown maintained that further action is necessary to achieve full justice for the affected relatives.
