Victims of historical forced adoption will receive a formal apology from the prime minister on Thursday after decades of campaigning.

An estimated 185,000 babies were taken from young mothers between 1949 and 1976, with many pressured into giving up their children because they were unmarried.

Campaigner and former Labour MP Ann Keen said she was looking forward to “being released from my shame” when Sir Keir Starmer apologises on behalf of the British state.

The apology comes after years of campaigning from mothers, adoptees, and their wider families and parliamentary reports into the issue.

Campaigners, including Keen, are meeting the prime minister in Downing Street ahead of his statement in Parliament.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme ahead of the meeting, Keen said she “didn’t have a say” in her son’s adoption after she was sent to a Swansea mother and baby home in 1966, when she was 17.

“We all need this apology because we have always been accused of giving up our babies and we didn’t give them up,” Keen said.

The former health minister said mothers and adoptees had been “waiting a long time” for an apology, but that the government had “done the best they could, because it’s so complex”.

Affected women have said public sector employees, such as doctors, nurses and social workers, were involved in pressuring them into adoption due to social stigma around being young and unmarried.

In March, a parliamentary inquiry recommended the government urgently apologise for the state’s role in the practice.

The inquiry report, from the Education Committee, found that government decisions had “shaped the environment in which unmarried mothers were often shamed and coerced into having their children put up for adoption”.

It called for improved access to adoption records, as well as more support for people seeking to contact or reunite with their families.

It stopped short of recommending financial redress to victims, but called on the government to “rigorously assess” how other countries had responded to historical forced adoption, including Australia, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

A previous report from the Joint Committee on Human Rights called for a state apology in 2022. The then-Conservative government said it was “sorry on behalf of society” in 2023, but said it did not think a formal apology was appropriate “since the state did not actively support these practices”.

Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson confirmed two weeks ago that a formal apology was on the way from the UK government.

“The prime minister will have more to say on this shameful period in our history, reflecting the gravity of what has happened,” she said at the time.

The apology will come three years after the devolved governments in Cardiff and Holyrood said sorry to victims of forced adoption in Wales and Scotland.

An apology is also expected in Northern Ireland, but not until after the completion of a public inquiry, following a 2021 report on mother and baby institutions, Magdalene laundries and workhouses.

Previous BBC reporting into forced adoption led to the parliamentary inquiry.

Gaynor Weatherly, whose mother was 16 when she was born in 1963, told the BBC in 2021 that while she had found happiness through her own marriage and children, she felt “cheated out of a different life”.

Diana Defries, who was 16 when she became pregnant, had her baby taken from her moments after she gave birth.

Also speaking to the BBC in 2021, she said: “I yelled to bring her back, but the nurse then just walked past me and put my daughter on a table out of my reach.”

The JCHR report in March also found that the state was “aided in enacting its policies by charities and religious institutions, who were, for example, responsible for the operation of mother and baby homes”.

In June, the Church of England said it was “profoundly sorry” for its role in forced adoptions.

In a formal apology, the Archbishop of Canterbury Dame Sarah Mullally said victims experienced “pain and trauma and suffering and fear when you should have received care and compassion”.

She added: “You have nothing to be ashamed of. The shame is ours.”