UK government sorry for child migrant abuse at Australian farm schools

A UK inquiry has concluded its public hearings into how child migrants were sexually abused, beaten and used as slave labour at Australian farm schools.

File photo Source: AAP

British Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has told a UK inquiry that last century's child migration policy was "fundamentally flawed" and led to the sexual abuse of children at farm schools in Australia.

In a statement read to the child sexual abuse inquiry sitting in London he reiterated a 2010 government apology to former child migrants for the suffering the policy caused them.

The inquiry has heard former migrants tell of being sexually, physically and emotionally abused at institutions run by the royals-backed Fairbridge Society, the Christian Brothers and other church and charity groups in Australia up to the 1970s.

Up to that time around 130,000 children in care, whose parents often could not afford to keep them, were shipped from the UK to institutional care in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the former Rhodesia.

In part the policy was designed to populate the dominions with "good, white British stock" and often children were falsely told their parents were dead.

Hunt said the British government had failed to ensure the safety and welfare of child migrants and should have enacted regulations to lessen the likelihood of sexual abuse and ensure children could report such abuse.

The inquiry has heard that children who complained of abuse were accused of lying and often flogged in front of other children as a warning not to complain.

Hunt noted that at in the 1940s and 1950s only a few instances of sex abuse at institutions in Australia had come to the attention of authorities in Britain.

But he accepted it was not good enough "to say we didn't know" and it was clear from the evidence of numerous former child migrants that sexual abuse occurred.

"The abuse was vastly more widespread than was reported at the time."

Hunt said the UK government had assisted the Child Migrants Trust with more than STG7 million ($A11.5 million) in funding to help former child migrants find the families they had been separated from and to provide counselling.

The trust has called for full financial redress for surviving migrants as well as ongoing funding for family reunification and counselling.

Hunt said the government would carefully consider the recommendations of the inquiry which wrapped up public hearings on Wednesday and is due to publish a report by the end of the year

That report is expected to make recommendations on a redress scheme for former child migrants, following one planned in Australia.