Despite a plea from an all party group of MPs in the House of Commons and questions raised in the House of Lords, the British government appears determined to resist any attempts at financial compensation to elderly Mau Mau victims in Kenya.

Recently, a cross-party group of UK MPs published an open letter demanding an apology and the creation of a welfare fund to help the alleged victims through old age.

It followed a question put by former Liberal Democrat party leader Sir David Steel in the House of Lords, who questioned what action the British government was prepared to take over the Mau Mau issue.

Lord Steel asked the government’s foreign minister in the House of Lords, former Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock “whether or not they had held meetings with a delegation from Kenya seeking the establishment of a compensation fund for the ill-treatment of Mau Mau detainees; and what consideration they are giving to the matter.”

In reply, Baroness Kinnock said that a Foreign office delegation had met a delegation from Kenya on December 3, “to discuss the matter.”

He went on to say that the UK Government were “considering the points raised at the meeting, but as this matter is subject to legal proceedings it would not be appropriate to comment further.”

The Guardian newspaper said this week that the British government was “invoking an obscure legal principle” to dismiss claims of torture and rape by the British colonial administration in Kenya.

The Foreign Office has said four elderly Kenyans alleging that they suffered serious physical and sexual abuse at the hands of the British during the Kenyan “emergency” of 1952 to 1960 should not be allowed to proceed with their claim because of the law of state succession.

The government argues it is “not liable for the acts and omissions of the Kenyan colonial administration”, claiming the Kenyan government was now responsible for events that took place while the country was a British colony.

The Guardian said that allegations that the British abused suspected Mau Mau fighters have continued since the Kenyan government lifted a 30-year ban on membership in 2003.

But the government is refuting liability for the case, in which the claimants describe allegedly being castrated, sexually assaulted and beaten during their detention by the British and say they are still suffering consequences.

The Guardian report says that the case “could open the way for up to 12,000 Kenyans to seek redress”.

The case was filed at the high court last year, by Daniel Leader, a lawyer at Leigh Day, who said that  “the nature and scale of this abuse was unparalleled in modern British colonial history.

The claimants are among the poorest in Kenyan society, and they still live with injuries from that period.

“Historians have been through the public records, and the use of systematic violence was authorised at the highest level in London,” Mr Leader said. “We have the documents to prove that.”

The UK government’s decision to have the case struck out on technical grounds of state succession – the principle that countries assume liability for their own affairs after independence – “has infuriated human rights campaigners, who accuse the UK of shirking its responsibilities for rights abuses in former colonies,” the Guardian said.