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12.11 pm
Mr. John Healey (Wentworth): I hesitate to speak because so many of my hon. Friends--and, indeed, colleagues on the other side of the House--have such distinguished and direct experience of the issues we are debating. Therefore I begin by declaring that I am not, and have never been, a social worker--at least, not until I became a Member of Parliament.
I declare my interest in, and support for, this important Bill and warmly congratulate the hon. Member for Winchester (Mr. Oaten) first, on his fortune in the ballot and, in particular, on his judgment in selecting such an issue. By picking up the Bill and promoting it in the House, he is shedding light on a little-noticed legislative gap and on many of the policy issues arising from it, some of which have been raised today.
I also congratulate the hon. Gentleman on promoting the Bill in a way that commands cross-party support. Before I was elected to the House, I had the good fortune to draft two private Member's Bills, both of which became law. The first--the Disabled Persons (Services, Consultation and Representation) Act 1986--was promoted by my right hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge and Chryston (Mr. Clarke), who then represented Monklands, West, and cross-party backing was crucial in forcing it through the House. The second--the Hearing Aid Council (Amendment) Act 1989--was promoted by the hon. Member for Ynys Mon (Mr. Jones).
I also congratulate the hon. Gentleman--and the Government, too--on the Government backing that he has for the Bill. It is probably the most essential component, given the vagaries of the private Member's Bill process.
Clearly, the Bill meets the need for new legislation to update adoption law, which is an example of social legislation lagging significantly behind social change. Since the passing of the last major piece of adoption legislation--the Adoption Act 1976--the number of adoptions has halved. Fewer babies and toddlers are being adopted, and a greater proportion of adoptions are of older children. More people are interested in adopting children from abroad and half of all adoptions, in contrast to 20 or 25 years ago, arise from remarriage.
In addition, the number of children available for domestic adoption has dropped and the number of people wishing to adopt has maintained its rate, so there has been a steady growth in intercountry adoptions in recent years. Considering the number of intercountry adoptions and the number of adoptions in this country of children from abroad, which the Department of Health estimates to be about 300 each year through the established channels, those who drafted the 1965 Hague convention simply could not have dreamed of such a level of international interest and cross-border adoption.
The hon. Member for Guildford (Mr. St. Aubyn)--I am sorry that he is not in his place--suggested that the increase in intercountry adoption began after the second world war, but it has taken place in only the past 20 or 25 years, not the past 50.
While I am on the subject, I should make it clear that it was not only my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Wyre (Mr. Dawson) who objected to some of the hon. Gentleman's comments. All Labour Members present disagree with the idea that children adopted from another country could be adopted by parents who were not judged good enough or suitable to adopt children in this country.
Mr. Duncan:
He did not say that.
Mr. Healey:
I concede that the hon. Member for Guildford was somewhat confused and repetitious, but if he and the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Mr. Duncan) study Hansard on Monday morning, they will see that he did say that.
The increase in the number of intercountry adoptions in the past two decades has left us with no proper legal framework for dealing with them. We have no legislation to allow the UK to ratify the successor Hague convention that was thrashed out in 1993 and we have no criminal offence procedures to discourage adoption outside the proper, established channels. It is estimated that some 100 children a year--my hon. Friend the Minister may
be able to confirm that figure--are brought into the UK and adopted without approval and without following the official adoption procedures. The Bill would be a useful measure to try to tackle the three shortcomings of the current legislative position.
If we look back over the past three decades, it is clear that the UK has played a leading role in international policy and conventions on the issue. The 1989 UN convention on the rights of the child, which covered adoption for children who could not live with their birth parents, was the product of discussions and negotiations in which the UK Government and UK non-governmental organisations played a leading part, as they did in 1993 with the Hague convention on protection of children and co-operation in respect of intercountry adoption. By March this year, 25 countries had ratified the Hague convention, six had acceded to it, which is a form of ratification, and a further 35 had signed up to it, including our Government. The Bill would put Britain back into the leading pack of countries in tackling the problem.
The admirable briefing prepared by the Library as background to the Bill contains the 1993 Hague convention and lists the signatories to it; Brazil in May 1993, Burkina Faso in April 1994, Canada in April 1994, Colombia in September 1993, Costa Rica in May 1993, Ecuador in May 1994, Finland in April 1994, Israel in November 1993, Mexico in May 1993, the Netherlands in December 1993, Romania in May 1993, the UK in January 1994, the USA in March 1994 and Uruguay in September 1993. That makes 14 countries that have signed the convention, but 66 are supposed to have ratified, signed or acceded to the convention. Therefore, 52 are unaccounted for and I would be grateful for any information that the hon. Member for Winchester or my hon. Friend the Minister could provide to help to fill the gap.
The list of countries that have signed or ratified the convention shows the scope of this international legislation. It shows the reach of the legal net that we are trying to cast across the procedures for intercountry adoptions. The number and names of those contracting countries are crucial to our understanding of how well the system that the Bill signs us up to can operate.
I envisage this system developing significantly under the provisions of the Hague convention. Each country is required by the convention to establish a central authority and accredited bodies to carry out the duties specified in the convention. Those duties are to collect, preserve and exchange information about the situation of the child and the prospective adoptive parents; to facilitate, follow and expedite proceedings with a view to obtaining the adoption; to promote the development of adoption, counselling and post-adoption services in their own states; and to provide each other with general evaluation reports about the experiences they have had with intercountry adoptions.
Contracting countries have, therefore, a duty to enforce the system in their own state, to co-operate with other states to make the system work across country boundaries, and to exchange detailed information to make it work. When we put those duties together, we begin to see the evolution of a system in which similar standards are set across different countries, and in which best practice is exchanged, information is swapped, and relationships and confidences are established between states and between authorities carrying out these duties. I believe that that
will lead to a bedding down and spreading of international values that are embodied in the United Nations convention on the rights of the child and in the Hague convention.
As Martin Luther King said, morality cannot be legislated for, but behaviour can be regulated. By setting standards of behaviour and good practice, we can influence social values and help to establish moral values that guide us on what is and what is not acceptable.
Let us hope that the Bill is this country's step towards stamping out the practice in which children are carted from country to country in an international bazaar of children. The demand in developed, affluent, stable countries is met by supply from unstable, poverty-stricken states. The testimony that we heard from the hon. Member for Portsmouth, South (Mr. Hancock) bore that out vividly.
Some freelance agencies are driven by the parental demand to adopt a child irrespective of the source. They are responsible for the trafficking of children, such as occurred when the Ceausescu regime in Romania collapsed in 1990. The European Children's Trust has evidence of child smuggling. A ring was established in the 1990s. Mothers from Romania, Albania, Yugoslavia and other countries were brought to Budapest for the birth of their children, who were sold by that cartel mainly to parents in the United States. Difficulties arose over the national identities of children who were born in Hungary, but whose mothers hailed from neighbouring countries.
I want the Bill to provide legal confirmation that this country condemns, and wishes to constrain, such trade, and will impose criminal penalties. It is essential to bear in mind the potential impact on children of adoptions that are illegal, or result from informal or irregular procedures. That is underlined by the European Children's Trust, which has considerable experience in this regard, and which argues:
"The child's right to identity can disappear if information of its origins (ethnic origin, medical history, knowledge of its birth parents) is lost, as often happens in illegal adoption."
The trust reminds us that
"Children brought into a country illegally can find themselves in a limbo: where they have lost their original nationality but failed to gain a new one--and so are stateless."
It also reminds us that children who are ill or have other difficulties may, having been transported for adoption, be rejected and committed to institutions in a new country with which they have no former connection.
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