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12.41 pm
Mr. Gareth R. Thomas (Harrow, West): I welcome the opportunity to take part in the debate. I often feel that the computer that is used for the ballot for private Members' Bills and for questions has a deep-seated bias against Members from Harrow, West. I congratulate the hon. Member for Winchester (Mr. Oaten) on his good fortune.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst): Order. The ballot for private Members' Bills is conducted by me. There is no computer involved.
Mr. Thomas: I am grateful for that clarification.
The hon. Member for Winchester has done the House a service by the way in which he introduced the Bill, the all-party support that he has drawn together and the effective way in which he has liaised with the Department of Health. He has given Parliament the opportunity to support a small, but vital, child protection measure.
My only query about what the hon. Gentleman has said lies in his highlighting of the frustration of several couples to whom he had spoken about their dealings with social work professionals. I do not know the cases to which he referred and I would be the last to support bad practice--it is right that we should champion high standards--but I hope that he agrees with the hon. Member for Portsmouth, South (Mr. Hancock), who made it clear in his helpful comments that adoption issues were complex. They are not easy for any of the professionals involved. I hope that he is wary of supporting those, particularly some elements in the media, who seek to traduce the social care profession at every turn. I am sure that that was not his intention, but we need to be cautious.
The Bill offers protection to the relatively small number of children who are adopted from overseas. I understand that there are 400 such adoptions on average every year. Of those, 300 are through the approved channels, but, sadly, 100 are not. A Bill to update adoption legislation is clearly overdue. The current key legislation is the Adoption Act 1976 and the Adoption (Scotland) Act 1978, which were passed more than 20 years ago.
The number of people adopting from overseas is increasing. The Bill has certainly not been the victim of a lack of consultation. The parents of the Bill, for want of a better term, are the 1993 United Nations Hague convention on intercountry adoption--which was underpinned by the 1989 United Nations convention on the rights of the child--and the discussion papers published by the previous Government between 1990 and 1992 on intercountry adoption and wider international issues. That led to the comprehensive consultation document and Bill introduced in 1996 by the right hon. Member for South-West Surrey (Mrs. Bottomley). She did not have a particularly distinguished record at the Department of Health, but she deserves credit for
introducing that consultation document and Bill. Sadly, the Bill did not complete its passage through the House because of time constraints, but it received wide support from professionals in the field and from the judiciary.
As other hon. Members have highlighted, one important--albeit secondary--dimension of the Bill is that it allows Parliament to fulfil an international obligation by giving effect to the 1993 Hague convention. Several other countries have been much quicker off the mark in passing the convention into law and, as Britain was a key player in drafting the convention, it is important that we take the opportunity to incorporate it in our law.
My hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale, East (Mr. Goggins) and others have correctly highlighted the appalling television images of war orphans in Bosnia that we all remember--indeed, we now see pictures of war orphans in Kosovo. There were appalling news stories from orphanages and care homes in Romania when the Ceausescu regime was coming to an end. Such stories bring out the humanitarian instinct in all of us: when we hear of, or see, a child abandoned or relinquished by his or her birth parents for whatever reason, or whose birth parents have died, the natural feeling of all of us is that we want to help that child to find a family. However, my hon. Friend pointed out that we should be cautious about such natural instincts, and that the solution to the problems of poverty and war lies in the work being done by my right hon. Friends the Chancellor and the Secretary of State for International Development. They are trying to secure long-term debt relief and sustainable development and long-term increases in the capacity and infrastructure of the health and social care systems in countries affected by those problems.
The 1989 United Nations convention on the rights of the child recognises the importance of family life for children. That convention and the 1993 Hague convention on intercountry adoption recognise that such adoption may offer the advantage of a permanent family to a child when a suitable family cannot be found in the child's state of origin. It must be right that intercountry adoption is the last resort, but it must also be right to allow a child the right to be adopted by a family living overseas, if that is the only realistic alternative to a childhood spent in institutional care.
We must first ensure, however, that a child cannot be appropriately adopted in his or her own country. My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, East (Mr. McNulty) did the House a service when he highlighted the letter from Catherine Stevens of the Romanian Orphanage Fund in response to the case of Edita Keranovic. Catherine Stevens points out the considerable success of the Romanian Orphanage Trust in removing more than 3,000 children from orphanages and returning them to family life. That was done wholly within the framework of domestic Romanian law; indeed, 80 per cent. of those children returned to their original family or to their extended family.
Adoption in any case, and especially adoption by an overseas family, often requires considerable adjustment, on the part of both the child and the adoptive family. We must ensure that the adoptive family is itself capable of adapting, and that it can help the adopted child to adapt effectively to a new life away from his or her own country, from family and friends and from familiar settings. Perhaps that child will have to use a different
language and adapt to a different culture in a completely new environment. In that respect, the Bill is clearly welcome.
There are many examples of highly dedicated and altruistic people with the most noble motives who offer the opportunity of a new life and family to children--who are perhaps the victims of appalling tragedies.
As other hon. Members have rightly said, there have been well-publicised cases in which adoptions of children from overseas have been contested further down the line. It is right that every avenue for adoption by the existing extended family, or by another family from the same state of origin, should be explored and exhausted before intercountry adoption is accepted; the case of Edita Keranovic sounds a warning note in that respect. It is entirely sensible that new rules for intercountry adoption that protect both the rights of the child and the position of the adopting family are now introduced to regulate that process.
It is not surprising that there can be friction between those who have to investigate a family for suitability to adopt and the couple themselves. The hon. Member for Winchester was right to say that the Bill would help to ensure that clear minimum standards for that process were set throughout the country. My hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth (Mr. Healey) highlighted the figures from the House of Commons Library research paper on the number of countries that have signed, ratified and acceded to the convention. I echo the question that he asked of the Minister and the hon. Member for Winchester: what action is being taken to persuade other signatories of the 1993 convention, and countries that might accede to it, to speed up their endorsement?
My understanding of the current procedure for intercountry adoption is that approval of adopters' suitability is undertaken by the local authority social services department, or some other approved adoption agency, and that a successful application is then forwarded to the Department of Health for certification, so that it can be passed on to the relevant authority in the child's state of origin. Several hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Winchester and my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Ms Coffey), have spoken of the variety of practices and standards throughout the country, and of the Bill's importance in helping to clarify some of those standards. The duty that the Bill would impose on local authorities to include intercountry adoption within their adoption services is clearly sensible and a key clarification.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stockport did the House a great service in raising the issue of child trafficking and the enormous number of agencies that offer help with adoption and try to make money from doing so. The new criminal offence of non-compliance with regulations resulting from the Bill is clearly welcome, as it will help to ensure that the practice of statutory and non-statutory agencies is in line with the legislation.
The key to convincing people inside and outside the House who may have doubts about the Bill lies in the comments of Felicity Collier, of the British Agencies for Adoption and Fostering. She says:
"We warmly welcome this . . . Bill, which, if it became law, would provide much needed protection for children adopted from overseas. It is a matter of urgency that the UK ratify the Hague
23 Apr 1999 : Column 1184Convention . . . which it signed in 1994. This will enable us to work towards a position where all intercountry adoptions are made through government approved agencies and children are only adopted by families from outside their country of origin when it is clear that they cannot be placed with a family in their own country."
The hon. Member for Winchester has done the House a service in the way in which he introduced his Bill and made the case for it. I warmly welcome the Bill and wish it a smooth passage through Committee.
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