Olivia Grange described the decision as a “really big deal”. The petition asks whether the forced transportation of Africans to Jamaica was lawful, whether it constituted a crime against humanity and whether Britain is obliged to provide restitution for slavery and its continuing consequences.

Jamaica invoked a rarely used provision of the Judicial Committee Act 1833 allowing the monarch to refer questions of a “legal or constitutional nature” to the Privy Council.

Ms Grange said: “The king could have ignored us. The king could have delayed responding to us. The king could have made a decision not to refer the questions to the privy council, or he could make a decision to refer the questions.”

A Privy Council opinion would not compel the UK government to pay reparations, but Jamaican officials believe it could influence future negotiations and legal options.

The petition was lodged in London on September 7, with Ms Grange leading a delegation that also met diaspora groups, MPs, church leaders and cultural institutions.

The move comes after Caribbean nations discussed a multipronged “action plan” for pursuing reparations at a Caricom conference in Barbados.

Hilary Beckles, chair of the Caricom Reparations Commission, said: “When Jamaica took its petition to the UK, we had to surround that petition with the fact that when Jamaica became independent in 1962, 80 per cent of the black people in Jamaica could not read or write.

“After 300 years of British colonisation, they moved into independence with 80 per cent illiteracy. How do you build a modern nation, not even a competitive economy, with 80 per cent illiteracy?”

A spokesperson for Prime Minister Andy Burnham said that “the UK does not and will not pay reparations”.