House of Commons
Friday 23 April 1999
The House met at half-past Nine o'clock
PRAYERS
[Madam Speaker in the Chair]
Speakers' Statement
9.34 am
Madam Speaker: The hon. Member for Aldershot (Mr. Howarth) raised a point of order yesterday to which I promised to reply. In my rulings on the case of Senator Pinochet, I have always indicated that the sub judice rule applies in relation to the extradition case to be decided by the courts. On a number of occasions, I have allowed questions to be put in the House on the impact of the case on relations with Chile and on the Home Secretary's role in giving an authority to proceed in extradition cases generally. When such matters have been raised, the Chair has sought to restrict comment on the issues to be determined in the extradition case. In that respect, the exchanges in the House of Lords on Wednesday were not out of line with what has been possible in this House. The Table Office will continue to assist Members in pursuing such matters in questions and by other means.
Orders of the Day
Adoption (Intercountry Aspects) Bill
Order for Second Reading read.
9.35 am
Mr. Mark Oaten (Winchester): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
One way in which to judge the society that we live in is to assess the way in which we treat our children. One has only to consider the awful images of Kosovo to know that children can bring out strong emotions. Our country has a proud record of protecting the rights of children. It is interesting that the issue is covered by other private Members' Bills, including the one that came first in the ballot, the Protection of Children Bill, promoted by the hon. Member for Stourbridge (Ms Shipley).
For children who need care, we have a very good fostering and adoption system. Adoption of children living in the United Kingdom is rightly well regulated. The transfer of a child from his or her natural birth parents to a new set of parents cannot take place without rigorous controls and processes. Most adoptions in the UK involve British babies and parents. However, there is another sort of adoption, involving couples who seek to adopt a child from a foreign country. Although that does not involve large numbers, on average, five or six such adoptions take place every week. Intercountry adoption, as it is known, is new to this country and there are few rules to regulate it. My Bill seeks not only to provide for the regulation of intercountry adoption, but to improve the quality of intercountry adoption services to give even better protection to the children and, importantly, to help the prospective parents through the routes that will lead to adoption.
Until the Romanian revolution in 1989, intercountry adoption had a low profile in Britain. Although it has risen to about 300 cases a year, we do much less than other countries. In the United States, the annual figure for overseas adoptions is 10,000; in Holland and Sweden, about 2,000. Children come to this country from all over the world. In the past six years, families in the United Kingdom have adopted children from 42 different countries. The most popular are China, India and Guatemala. It is interesting to note that only three children came from Yugoslavia or Serbia, which do not have a history of allowing children to be adopted abroad.
If such small numbers are involved, why do we need the Bill? There are some problems with the current system. Most intercountry adoptions go through the proper channels. Prospective adopters get approval from local authority social services departments or an approved agency. Although the process is long and costly, it is legal and operates in the interests of the child. Regrettably, it is estimated that, in about 100 cases a year, people try to avoid the adoption procedures and bring children into the UK without their suitability as adoptive parents being properly assessed. In such cases, prospective parents may be aware that, if they went through the assessment programme, they would not be successful or, worse, they may have gone through it and been considered unsuitable, but believe that taking a foreign child is a back way to adoption.
Not only do some foreign adoption authorities and individuals place children with such people, but the means by which some children become available is a cause for concern. It is not uncommon for children to be delivered to an airport in mainland Europe for the adoptive parents to collect them. They return by car to the UK by a selected port of entry late at night, when they know that they are unlikely to be challenged about the presence of an unexpected child. Sadly, the new parents often meet the child for the first time at the airport, which must be traumatic for the children. The Bill addresses those and other concerns.
Over the past few months, I have met many of the groups involved in intercountry adoption to learn more about their concerns: the British Agencies for Adoption and Fostering, the overseas adoption helpline, the Adoption Forum, Childlink and many others. I put on record their help and advice to me in preparing the Bill and their invaluable work in raising awareness of intercountry adoption.
More importantly, I have been speaking to couples who have gone through the process--and who, in some cases, have brought children into the country without permission. Some of their concerns are great, and I hope that they will be tackled by the Bill. I shall return to that subject later.
So what does the Bill do? There are four key areas. First, the Bill will introduce for the first time specific provisions to regulate intercountry adoption. It will make it clear to local authorities that they have a responsibility to provide an adoption service that includes intercountry adoption.
Secondly, one of the Bill's main aims is to enable the UK to ratify the 1993 Hague convention on protection of children and co-operation in respect of intercountry adoption, in whose preparation, I am pleased to say, the UK has played an influential part. Thirdly, other provisions of the Bill will regulate adoption to prevent trafficking in children and to enable a child adopted from overseas to enjoy the same legal status as does a child adopted in the UK.
Finally, other aspects of the Bill will improve the adoption process, avoiding unnecessary delays in handling adoption applications and speeding up the process in the interests of all concerned.
I stress that the Bill is not intended to place new obstacles in the path of people who wish to adopt children from overseas. However, it will establish a clear legal framework to enable prospective adopters to adopt from abroad in a way that provides maximum protection for the child.
I shall now deal with those four areas in more detail. The UK's ratification of the 1993 Hague convention is long overdue. The convention is underpinned by the 1989 United Nations convention on the rights of the child. The countries that have ratified that convention agree to have key standards and that gives an assurance that, when adoptions proceed between those countries, everything is in the greatest possible order.
Amazingly, although we signed the convention about six years ago, we are not yet among the countries that have ratified it. Despite cross-party support there has not,
to date, been parliamentary time to do so, and I hope that, today, we can start to put that right, because it must seem very odd to countries such as the Philippines, Poland and Romania, for example, which have ratified the convention and are sending their children to the UK, that the United Kingdom has not yet ratified it.
The second important measure is to tackle the bad practice--if that is the right word--of private arrangements for adoption and bringing a child into the UK for adoption without the proper authority. It is important to state that no person has a right to adopt. The Adoption Act 1976 provides that an adoption may be arranged only by a local authority or an approved adoption agency--unless the child is a blood relative of the person making the arrangements. It is an important principle that the local authority or agency must make proper assessments, proper home visits and proper approvals before that adoption can proceed. However, a person making arrangements who is not a local authority or an approved agency is not authorised to do so and is committing a criminal offence.
The Department of Health has long maintained the view that privately commissioned home study assessments, as they are known, that are made in the knowledge that they are to lead towards an intercountry adoption contravene the 1976 Act. However, some recent High Court judgments have not always reflected the Department's view. The Bill will, therefore, make it clear that privately commissioned assessments with the aim of an adoption will not be permitted, and that any person who prepares such a report or starts to make arrangements for an intercountry adoption in that way will be guilty of a criminal offence. The future of a child should not be the outcome of some private negotiations between lawyers or people who are not professionally qualified. In addition, it is planned, by regulations to follow, to tighten the laws in relation to bringing children into the country without proper procedures.
The third measure is somewhat technical, but it will mean that children adopted under the 1993 convention will receive British citizenship automatically if at least one parent is British when the adoption order is made, and is resident in the UK. That is a simple technique, which will replace the current long-drawn-out process, involving several appearances in court. It also meets the requirements of the Hague convention that a child adopted from overseas will enjoy a status at least equal to that of a child adopted in the UK.
Fourthly and finally, one of the Bill's most important aspects is its creation of a more efficient and effective process for the operation of intercountry adoption services. My discussions with parents revealed that many were dissatisfied with the service that they received from local authorities. I suppose that, as so few foreign adoptions take place, it is not surprising that good practice is, or has been, very rare. It has led to a wide variation in local authorities' performance in that area, and I strongly believe that firm guidelines and standards need to be put in place, with better training--but, above all, with a more positive attitude to intercountry adoption.
Perhaps that comment is slightly unfair on some local authorities, whose standards and practice in intercountry adoption are very high; but so many parents told me that they were intensely frustrated by the process they experienced that I must conclude that some social workers had a negative attitude to intercountry adoption. Parents felt
that they were being asked unrealistic questions; they told me that, in some cases, a definite attempt was made to talk them out of the process when they first made contact with the social services department.
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