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Mr. McNulty: I am grateful for that intervention, and I endorse the hon. Gentleman's comments. I raised the case to highlight not only that point but another issue.
Mr. John Healey (Wentworth): There has been turmoil in the Balkans for much longer than two years, so perhaps the two-year deadline is insufficient. It is difficult to see how a permanent adoption and settlement can follow an adoption from an emergency situation.
Mr. McNulty: We must explore that area more fully in Committee. Many--if not all--hon. Members have said
that the real strength of the Bill lies in the fact that it seeks to graft an already rigorous domestic system on to the intercountry adoption process. Secondary or alternative criteria should not apply to intercountry adoptions, but I am not sure whether we should apply explicit and distinct criteria to adoptions from zones of conflict in addition to criteria from the assorted conventions.
Mr. Oaten: I must clarify the point that I made about the period of time after which adoptions can take place in emergency situations. The critical factor is that the two-year rule applies after the conflict has ended. It does not matter how long that conflict has continued.
Mr. McNulty: It may be difficult to establish just when the conflict in the Balkans has concluded. That might be a further item for discussion in Committee.
I raise the case of Edita Keranovic in response to a letter from Catherine Stevens of the Romanian Orphanage Fund. She wrote:
Catherine Stevens went on to say:
The research paper says:
It is important to emphasise that the European Children's Trust fully supports the Bill, and says that there are four good reasons for doing so. First, as we have all agreed, the trust says that the Bill will improve the adoption process. It states:
Despite what I have said, child smuggling does go on, and putting an end to that is the trust's second reason for supporting the Bill. It says:
The trust's third reason for supporting the Bill is that it will
The trust believes--I like these little phrases--that
In the 1930s, my father was very lucky that the MacFadden family took him out of the county home and that he did not live in an orphanage until his adolescence. He was, however, dreadfully unlucky in that his real family remained unknown to him for more than 50 years, and that he was never to meet, know or hug his own mother. We must get to a stage where children's futures, in national and international adoptions, are not left to a lottery such as the one that my father had to endure.
Systems and structures must be efficient and afford children the best life chances, ideally within the loving context of their own society and culture, but, where it is in the child's interest, through intercountry adoption. Children must come first but, as the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton said, intercountry adoption should still be the exception rather than the rule. Although it is the exception, it must be subject to a cogent, fair and effective legal framework, something that the Bill will begin to provide. As and when our home system is modified and improved in the ways that I and other hon. Members have suggested, I hope that we will put in place mechanisms equally to modify and improve the intercountry aspects of the adoption system.
Mr. Mike Hancock (Portsmouth, South):
I warmly welcome the opportunity to speak in this debate and, as other hon. Members have done, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Mr. Oaten) on having the courage to take on this issue. I am disappointed that I was not here at the beginning of his speech, but I had a constituency appointment early this morning. I do not know whether he mentioned how he came to present the Bill to the House, but he brings it here with the good wishes of his constituents, who were given a say in his choice of Bill.
We should warmly welcome the fact that, for the second day running, the House has been at one on legislation that will benefit people. Yesterday, there was all-party support for the Disability Rights Commission Bill, which was given an unopposed Second Reading. Today, it is nice to witness the House coming together to debate useful legislation and enable it to make swift progress. I congratulate Conservative Front-Bench Members on the warm way in which they have supported the Bill.
In the late 1980s and the 1990s, I had the opportunity to spend a great deal of time working in orphanages and asylums across eastern Europe. I was in six or seven countries during their emergence from their old Communist regimes. In the countries in which I did most work--Romania, Albania, Hungary and Moldova--there was obviously a great deal wrong with the way in which children had been looked after.
I remember the undue haste with which people from all over Europe and outside the continent flocked, particularly to Romania, and latterly to Albania and Moldova, in the hope of finding a perfect child to adopt. In the main, most of them were looking for perfect children. I worked mainly in asylums, dealing with some of the most traumatic abuses of the old Communist regime, so I worked predominately with adults, both men and women, but I also spent a lot of time working in orphanages. I well remember the glee expressed by the controllers of those establishments when visitors arrived
with their agents. Some of those agents, I am sad to say, were from Britain and others from Ireland but, in the main, they were from countries such as Romania.
If the children were old enough to walk, they would be paraded in front of the visitors but, if they were babies, the visitors would walk around the cots and look at the children. It was as if they were buying a dog for a child at Christmas. The process was pathetic and obscene, and it was obvious that action should be taken to stop it. Sadly, there were so many other priorities in a very difficult time for those countries that it was difficult for people in the countries involved to get to grips with what was going on.
Having now spoken to some of the politicians who came to the fore then, I know that many openly deny that they knew what was going on. That is a bizarre because the one certain thing is that, from no matter where in the political spectrum they came from, the people in power in eastern Europe knew what was going on. If they did not, they knew someone who did, who would certainly have told them. There is no excuse, except that the countries were in turmoil.
Soon after that, I became the leader of Hampshire county council. Our social services department was enlightened in encouraging help to eastern Europe but took a firm line on intercountry adoptions, being mindful of the problems that often accompany them. Sadly, there is abundant evidence that children who were adopted into this country ending up in local authority care because the novelty value wore off quickly. Such bitter experiences make me proud that Hampshire social services took a hard line on intercountry adoption.
I have first-hand experience of working in an orphanage in the middle of Transylvania. One little girl was adopted twice, once to France and once to Spain. While I was working there, she twice returned, once after six months and once after nine months. Can we imagine what that was like for her? She was picked because she was beautiful and stuck out in a crowd. She always had an appealing, beguiling smile that people liked, but she had had a horrendous life and was scarred by many bad circumstances, and that made her a difficult child to deal with in a home environment. The families probably had good intentions and thought that they were doing her a favour. In fact, they were doing themselves the bigger favour. They soon found that it was a mistake, and the girl ended up back in the same circumstances twice. Many others had serious problems.
The Bill is not perfect. Legislation will never be perfect until we realise the need for universal co-operation. We must closely examine the competence of the countries where the children originate. We must ensure that they have the facilities competently to deal with such children and the process of adoption, which is never easy. It is not easy in this country, and it is not easy when more than one country is involved.
"The case of Edita Keranovic . . . has once again focused attention on international adoption which, at best, offers a solution for a very small number of children and, at worst, makes large numbers of others vulnerable to exploitation.
That relates to the stark point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale, East and demonstrates that the emotional argument that children who are not offered intercountry adoption will be left to languish in orphanages--we have seen the state of Ceausescu's orphanages--is not true. International bodies such as the Romanian Orphanage Trust and internal agencies in Romania and other countries first seek in-country solutions. That is appropriate and their efforts should be supported.
Agencies such as the Romanian Orphanage Trust are working to promote long-term, in-country solutions to childcare problems in Central and Eastern Europe. We have had considerable success in Romania where we have got over 3,000 children out of orphanages and back into family life, entirely within the framework of Romanian law. Eighty per cent. of these children have returned to their original or extended family. Where this is not possible, there are plenty of Romanian families willing to adopt."
"Solutions can be found which prioritise the right and the best interests of children. These rights, and those of their families, should be safeguarded. International adoption"--
as the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Mr. Duncan) said--
"should never be the first recourse."
Even in a period of heightened conflict, when we see awful pictures of maltreatment and abuse of children in war zones, people should not go out to Romania, Kosovo, or wherever the conflict is taking place, take their pick of children and bring them back, assuming that they are doing the best for those children. The Bill reinforces that point.
"The British Agencies for Adoption and Fostering . . . in its leaflet on intercountry adoption, tries to discourage stereotypes of intercountry adoption by pointing out that images of Romanian 'orphans' or South American street children, or reports of child-trafficking rings and 'baby-farms' are only part of a much larger jigsaw of the intercountry adoption picture."
That is equally true.
"Social services departments will now need to improve their processes, speeding up adoptions and enabling more children to have a real home, giving them the best start in life."
I take on board the points made by my hon. Friends that improving the adoption process is desirable, but not at the expense of proper, rigorous, detailed checks and the accumulation of evidence.
"Standardising the intercountry adoption procedure in line with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child . . . will put an end to these exploitative rings as well as unethical agencies interested only in profit and not children's welfare."
That may be too much to hope for, but it is none the less an important point.
"give more children a real chance of real home."
The trust says:
"Ratifying the 1993 Hague Convention will enable people from the UK to adopt from abroad with less red tape."
However, the adoption process will be subject to just as much rigour as at present. The fourth reason to support the Bill is that it will give more children greater protection, by
"making it a criminal offence to arrange for an adoption without meeting strict requirements."
As I have said before, the Bill takes a tough but tender approach to streamline the process but strengthen the criminalisation of procedures that fail to meet the necessary requirements, which are so important.
"Children have a future, the orphanages do not"--
"should not" would be more aspirational but more accurate. The trust believes also that
"family based care is better than institutional care for most children."
All my colleagues who are ex-social workers would agree, even though the final consequence of that policy would be to put some of them out of a job. By definition, family care must be better than institutional care. Finally, the trust states:
"Responsibility for the welfare of children should be taken by national bodies using local resources."
I warmly welcome the Bill as a step in the right direction. I am thankful that the hon. Member for Winchester did not offer it as the panacea for all that is wrong.
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