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Lord Campbell of Alloway: I wholly accept, and I shall be brief, what has just been said by the noble Baroness. I have been thinking about it for some time before she said it. It must be the parent or the guardian; for various reasons you cannot go outside that. Furthermore, how on earth are you going to define the proposal? Who is "another person holding responsibility"? How will that be defined? Will it be by statute or by common sense? If it is common sense, what does it mean, how wide is it? If it is by some statute, it is a statute that was not designed for this purpose.

Baroness Barker: I am grateful to the Minister for her considered answer and also to the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, for proving that we are

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not always in league in the Bill. In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Campbell, I believe that the phrase "parental responsibility" is well understood in family court matters.

I take the point made by the Minister. I listened with great interest to what she said about the limitations of residence orders and I will bear those in mind when we discuss Clause 44 in greater depth.

I take the Minister's point about the need to ensure that a limited number of family members can agree to adoption, but in withdrawing the amendment I reiterate that the reality of family life and family structures is a good deal more complex now than it was in 1976. I will go away and study her words with care, but I am not absolutely and wholly convinced that she has got it wholly right. I accept that there may be limitations to the amendment, but I still believe that there is an issue there to which I may wish to return at a later stage. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 18 agreed to.

Clause 19 [Advance consent to adoption]:

[Amendment No. 52A not moved.]

Clause 19 agreed to.

Earl Howe moved Amendment No. 53:

After Clause 19, insert the following new clause—

"ADOPTION AT BIRTH OR WITHIN THREE MONTHS THEREAFTER
(1) Where an adoption agency is satisfied that each parent or guardian of a child has consented to the child being placed for adoption at birth, the adoption agency must place that child as soon as is practicable with the prospective adopters, with due regard to the birth-parents' rights to alter arrangements within time limits which shall be specified by regulations.
(2) Subject to subsection (3), where a local authority is satisfied that the consent of the parent or guardian's consent should be dispensed with, it may place the child with the prospective adopters without first obtaining a placement order, but it shall have a duty to apply for a placement order as soon as is practicable thereafter.
(3) Subsection (2) shall apply only to children under the age of three months."

The noble Earl said: This new clause is designed to create a fast-track procedure for the placement and adoption of very young children. It has been remarked that the Bill is very valuable in helping to tackle the real problems of large numbers of older, looked-after children who need to be given better chances of adoption, and I am sure we all say amen to that. However, we need to remember baby adoption as well. Baby adoption has become a much smaller part of the adoption scene over the years and the traditional mother-and-baby homes, which did such a sterling job in supporting mothers whether they wished to keep their babies or to place them for adoption, are now an endangered species. There are none left in the south east of England.

Is the Minister satisfied with the ability of local authorities and other agencies to support mothers who choose to have their children adopted after birth? The effectiveness of those services will determine how

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quickly a baby can be placed after birth. There is no dispute that the sooner a baby is placed with prospective adoptive parents, the better that will be for the child. The problem of children moving between foster homes applies equally to babies. One study found that some infants under 12 months had four or more moves which were not at the request of the fosterers. The long-term effects of that are incalculable. It must be right to place a baby with adoptive parents as soon as possible. That is what the first subsection of the new clause seeks to do.

The second subsection relates perhaps to a minority of cases, but it allows the local authority to dispense with the consent of the parents or guardian and place a child under three months old without having first to obtain a placement order. Clearly, that would occur only in extreme circumstances, and a placement should be obtained as soon as practicable. That will facilitate the immediate placement of the baby.

The new clause amends the Bill in what I believe is a relatively modest way but the idea behind it is important. It would ensure that the needs of very young children are paramount. The child will be placed as rapidly as possible so that the child's life is not disfigured by one or more moves before a permanent home is found.

I hope that the Minister will be sympathetic to the intent behind the amendment. I beg to move.

5.15 p.m.

Lord Northbourne: I rise briefly to support the noble Earl.

He referred to the importance of the first year or two of a child's life. I am sure that the Minister and the Committee are aware that new research over the past decade or two based on much more powerful scanners than were ever available before has enabled neurologists to look at the development of the child's brain. To give just two statistics, at birth the child already has approximately 50 trillion synapses in the brain already developed. During the first two years of life, that increases 20 times to 1,000 trillion synapses. During that period, if the child is exposed to, for example, violence, neglect or even to seeing the violence of its parents, which cause its defence mechanisms to develop, gradually those become hard-wired into the child and leave him or her with a tendency to violence, disruption, anger and an inability to control their anger. There are other things that can arise from the parenting environment in which the child lives during the first two years. I therefore enormously support the noble Earl, Lord Howe, in asking if we can devise, with due consideration of course to the rights of the parents, a way to get those baby children adopted as quickly as possible.

Baroness Gould of Potternewton: I rise briefly to support the amendment because I am concerned about the movement of very small children. It has a seriously detrimental effect on them. However, the noble Earl, Lord Howe, said that this should only happen in extreme circumstances and I understand that, but will

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he define what he perceives as extreme circumstances under which the consent of the parent or guardian could be dispensed with?

Baroness Thomas of Walliswood: We, too, are very aware of the damaging effect on even very small babies of being moved from person to person and in particular the effect it has on their capacity later in life to make relationships. I am concerned about subsection (2) of the amendment. The idea of taking a child away from its parents without consent at birth resonates in people's experience in a heartrending way. There have been many people in the past whose children for one reason or another were taken from them at birth, certainly not for any reasons that, I hope, any social worker today would remove a child. The mothers of illegitimate children, for example, had their children removed from them, in some cases even before they had been allowed to see the child. There are therefore some very sensitive issues here and I hope that the noble Earl will expand a little more on them in support of what the noble Baroness has just said. Perhaps the Minister will also be able to respond to these difficult issues.

Lord Campbell of Alloway: I rise briefly to support this measure. It is essential and it is part of the process which is not part of the Bill. As regards subsection (2), the steps of the Temple Church have for hundreds of years been a repository for unwanted babies. We have taken them in and fed them and had them nursed. There was a special nurse who used to look after them. Then I do not quite know what happened to them, but I presume that some of them were adopted. This sort of provision would enable that to be done. We still actually get one or two babies—if the Committee is interested—on the steps of the Temple Church. No way will you find the parent. There it is.

Earl Howe: Before the Minister replies to my amendment, perhaps I could add a few more remarks to those I made earlier in response to questions that have been raised.

I have been asked about the circumstances in which subsection (2) would be triggered. One of the sets of circumstances would be those to which my noble friend Lord Campbell has helpfully alluded, where one has a very young child who has been abandoned and nobody can trace the parents. It seems to me that that kind of case is one where a placement should be made, albeit unofficially, as soon as possible for the child's own benefit.

I readily concede, however, that the subsection should be expanded and enlarged. As it stands, it raises the spectre of local authorities taking babies away willy-nilly without due cause. There is no test that is specified or anything like that.

I hope that the Minister will regard the amendment very much in the nature of a probe. Clearly, the kinds of case that I had in mind were where the child was at risk of significant harm. There is nothing final about what the subsection suggests. There is no question of

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an adoption order being made without parental consent, or anything like that. It is simply for the benefit of the child to be put out of harm's way.

If, as I concede, the Minister feels that the subsection is not adequate as it stands, nevertheless, work can be done on it. I hope that it will provide a useful hook for debate—it already has—and that the Minister will see the merit of the intent, if not the letter.

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