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Mr. St. Aubyn: I have listened with interest to the hon. Gentleman. Could a child with a background such as that which he described in respect of the girl who was adopted twice ever be suitable for intercountry adoption? If so, would not the qualities that prospective parents would have to show be different from those required for a home adoption?
Mr. Hancock: I could not agree more. Few of the children with whom I worked were suitable for adoption out of their country. Many of their problems were peculiar to that country. Gypsy children of two, three and four had already had a flavour of life in their ethnic group but, for one reason or another, usually the economic decline of their family, were in orphanages. Many were not orphans in the true sense of the word. That is the other sad thing. There was a misleading belief that eastern Europe was full of orphanages with orphans as we understand the word--being without parents--but many were economic orphans. They were put in orphanages because families could no longer cope. It took time for people to acclimatise to the fact they were not dealing with children without family ties. Little or no effort was made to track down families.
I saw children leave homes because money had changed hands. It was horrendous. In the Transylvanian mountains, outside Brasov on the road to Sinaia, there were a couple of notorious homes. They were the first stopping point for anyone seeking a child. Once again, they were very selective. People sometimes took damaged children who needed more care and love than they were prepared to give. People who came to ease their consciences by offering a child a home made a big mistake. Children and families suffered. Siblings of those children in the United Kingdom and elsewhere suffered because the proper preparatory work was not done in either place.
The Bill will start to tighten or relax, as appropriate, the rules and regulations. It is to be welcomed, but we have to do more. The hon. Member for Harrow, East (Mr. McNulty) rightly highlighted the work of Romanian Orphanages Trust and other organisations working in countries such as Albania, even in the present difficult circumstances there. I was there last year, and I went there in the early 1990s, just after fall of the Hoxha regime, when I saw the size of the problem. They are making great efforts to accommodate children with loving, caring families, mainly from their own ethnic background, in their own country.
Bosnia and Croatia are good examples of countries where strong and successful efforts have been made to get to grips with what, in most circumstances, would be considered a real stain on the persona of a country--the fact that they had ignored, and in some instances responded grossly irresponsibly to, the needs of such children.
Mr. David Chaytor (Bury, North):
I congratulate the hon. Member for Winchester (Mr. Oaten) on his success in the ballot, on choosing this topic, and on his sensitive, careful and detailed speech.
The Bill's Second Reading debate is extremely timely, not only because of the 10th anniversary of the United Nations convention, but because of the conflict in the Balkans, which will inevitably encourage more people in western Europe, especially the United Kingdom, to take an interest in intercountry adoption as a genuine humanitarian response to the many thousands of individual personal tragedies that have resulted. It is absolutely right that the Bill is before us today, because it sets out a new regulatory framework, enables us to ratify the Hague convention and introduces many administrative procedures that will make things much better.
I am sceptical about much of the motivation for intercountry adoption. I endorse the comments of hon. Members--especially my hon. Friends the Members for Wythenshawe and Sale, East (Mr. Goggins) and for Bristol, West (Valerie Davey)--who have said that the real solution to the issue of children left without parents in countries that are struggling economically in eastern Europe and elsewhere is not to refine the process and encourage an increasing number of intercountry adoptions, but to establish social justice, universal health care and sustainable economic development in those countries.
Many hon. Members have spoken with great depth and conviction from wide professional experience--and, in some cases, from personal experience--but I had not thought deeply about the issue until recently. I especially want to contribute to the debate on behalf of two families in my constituency who brought their specific circumstances to my attention. I want to highlight the two issues that they brought to my attention, and invite the hon. Member for Winchester and the Minister to comment on them in their response to the debate.
Other hon. Members have mentioned the links between countries that may or may not have ratified the Hague convention, and that are certainly not in a condition of civil war, but from which there is a considerable community in the United Kingdom. I think of India, Pakistan, Cyprus and Turkey. I want to flag up the issue of adoption procedures that apply where families who are
resident in the United Kingdom, but who have relatives in other countries wish to adopt a distant relative or a close friend of a distant relative. I want to show the existing administrative difficulties that get in their way, by highlighting the case of a constituent.
The constituent, whom I shall not name, who originally came from a different country, has been settled in the UK for many years. About seven years ago, he discovered and adopted a friend of a relative of the family--at the time, a young boy--who had lost his mother in tragic circumstances, was rejected by his father, found himself without anyone to care for him in his country of origin and was transported to the United Kingdom in ways that we need not go into.
For more than seven years, my constituent and his wife cared for that young man. They were the only people in the world who took responsibility for him, and obviously a profound bond developed between the informally adoptive parents and the young boy. The point came at which the question of official adoption arose. My constituents started to make the necessary applications for adoption, and found themselves bogged down in a quagmire of contradictory regulations. For much of the past seven years, and all of the past three years, they have been involved in endless communication with various Government Departments.
The case was taken up by my predecessor as Member of Parliament for Bury, North, who did his best to resolve it. The source of the problem was that the advice that he was given by the then Government was that it was not possible to resolve the adoption application until the entry clearance procedures had been approved. My constituents and the young man found themselves in a cleft stick. For seven years, they have lived under the potential threat of the person whom they love most in the world being deported, and with constant emotional pressure on their lives. I am delighted to say that, after representations from me, my hon. Friend the Minister has finally agreed that in this case, entry clearance should be given because of the obvious humanitarian reasons for it.
The case highlights the tip of the iceberg. Members of settled communities in Britain who, for the most genuine reasons, wish to adopt relatives or friends of relatives in their country of origin get bogged down in an appalling administrative nightmare. There is a Catch-22 situation. They cannot go through the adoption procedure until entry clearance has been sorted out, and entry clearance will not be considered until the adoption application has been resolved. I should be grateful if the hon. Member for Winchester would comment on that in his response to the debate.
The second case that I shall describe raises an entirely different point. As has been said, the Bill deals with one aspect of the raft of issues dealt with, or in some cases not dealt with, by the Adoption Act 1976. To their credit, the previous Government set in train a review of that Act and published a Green Paper, or possibly a White Paper, on the matter. Did the hon. Member for Winchester consider other aspects of the 1976 Act that are in need of reform?
One of the most worrying aspects of adoption for many people is the inequality of access to information about adopted relatives. I have a constituent whose life has been dominated by that. Again, I shall not name the individual, for reasons of confidentiality.
The sister of my constituent was adopted in 1954--45 years ago. For the whole of that time--for most of my constituent's life--she has been preoccupied with the fate of her adopted sister. She knows that she is alive, because the present system allows her to find that out, but she has no right of access to information about her. In many countries--the United States, New Zealand, Australia and the Scandinavian countries--there is equality of access to information for adopted relatives and birth relatives.
Did the hon. Member for Winchester consider that as another necessary reform of the 1976 Act? Will my hon. Friend the Minister comment on the matter? I raised it through a parliamentary question some weeks ago, in February, and I subsequently wrote to my hon. Friend about it. The initial response that I received was that the Government are not considering any further review of the 1976 Act. I wrote back to the Minister making a special plea because of the profound anguish that the issue causes so many birth relatives, and because there seems to be no argument against introducing such equality of access to information.
Although fewer and fewer children are up for adoption these days, we should remember that, in the immediate post-war period, many hundreds of thousands of children were adopted. We can be thankful that social conditions and social attitudes have changed, so that the number of children adopted shortly after birth has dramatically reduced.
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