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Lord Lloyd of Berwick: My Lords, like all noble Lords, I suspect, I have had a huge postbag in relation to this issue, more than I have ever had before. So it is clearly a matter of great general public concern. All the letters have come from individuals, and almost all of them are hand-written. I tend to give much greater weight to those who have taken the trouble to write their own letters. All the letters make the same two
points. They say that children are best brought up in a normal family, and they have the same concern about children being brought up by homosexuals.As to the first point, there can be no dispute: we all agree that children are best brought up in a happily married family and we all agree that if there were enough happily married couples to adopt all the children who need adopting, there would be no problem. I am not talking about babies but about children of the age of 5 years and upwards. It is sadly the case that there are not enough married couples who want to adopt all those who need adopting. There is an acute shortage, in particular, of those who are willing to adopt what one might call the more difficult children. By "difficult" I mean the severely disabled, those who have been seriously traumatised by their upbringing, and even children who happen to be one of siblings. The question before the House is whether we should exclude their chance of being adopted by insisting that all prospective adopters should be married. My answer to that question is a simple no. It is not the case, as the noble Earl was half inclined to suggest, that there is another married couple in the wings waiting to adopt. I wish it were the case, but it is not.
I have had some experience of adoption cases as a judge, but never in the Family Division, which is where all the difficult decisions are made. But the picture I have is, I believe, accurate. One has the prospective adopters there sitting in court. The child will not normally be in court but the judge will have a great deal of information about the child from the social workers, the family welfare officer and various other sources. If he wants more information he will always be able to get it.
What does the judge do in such a case? He is not concerned with what is best for children in general; he is not concerned with the kind of statistics given by the noble Earl, Lord Howe. He thinksand thinks onlyabout what is best for that child in relation to those prospective adopters. That is exactly what he is required to do under Clause 1(1) of the Bill.
Let us now suppose that the prospective adopters are a man and woman who are suitable in every kind of way to adopt. They love each other, which is one of the most important things; they intend to stay together; and they mean to love the child. Now suppose the judge takes the view that it is in the child's best interests that there should be adoption by that couple and that the child has a permanent home with them rather than, which may be the only alternative, spending the rest of his childhood in a children's home or with a succession of foster parents. The judge should surely not be prevented from making the adoption order he would want to make simply because the two are not married. He could of course get round the difficulty. He could make the adoption order in favour of one or other of those two people living togetherbut surely, in passing the Bill, that is precisely the kind of artifice we should get away from and not encourage. It is said that, in some ways, this would undermine the institution of marriage. I do not believe that to be the case for one moment.
Why so many young people choose to live together and bring up children together without getting married, I do not profess to understand. They may have many reasons, none of which, I suspect, I would share. But we cannot compel them to get married, and we cannotor should nottempt them to do so by holding out the prospect of being able to adopt if they do get married. I agree with every word that the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, said on this aspect of the matter. Unless we allow unmarried couples to adopt, as time goes on we shall find that the gap gets ever wider. There will be more and more children, many of the kind I described
Baroness Strange: My Lords, can my noble and learned friend and the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, comment on the fact that adoption involves the process of law? Why should a couple be prepared to become involved in the process of law in adopting children but not for themselves as a couple?
Lord Lloyd of Berwick: My Lords, I am afraid that I may not quite have heard the noble Baroness. Even if I had, I am not sure that I would have been able to answer. Perhaps I could try to answer the question later.
As I said, there will be a gap: there will be more and more children in need of adoption who will not in fact be adopted. That is basically the reason why it seems to me that if unmarried couples are willing to adopt such children they should be allowed to do so. I agree with every word that the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, said on that.
One then comes to the more contentious question of adoption by homosexuals. It is more contentious but, in the end, I do not believe it to be more difficult. I suspect that not many people realise that it has been lawful for single persons to adopt for nearly 100 years, since the Adoption of Children Act 1926. No one suggests that we should change the law in that respect. Still fewer people realise that it is lawful for single homosexuals to adopt, and that actually happens. If you talk to any Family Division judge, you will find that he has made just such an order. Such orders regarding adoption by a single homosexual have been upheld by the highest courts in the land, notably by the Scottish Court of Session as recently as 1997 when the judgment was given by my noble and learned friend Lord Hope.
No amendment has been tabled to add words to the end of Clause 51(1)the clause dealing with single persons adoptingstating,
So far as I understand it, the only objection is the one mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin; namely, that the child will have two mothers or two fathers, as the case may be. As that child grows up and goes to school, I readily accept that that is likely to cause him or her difficulties. But if that difficulty is sensitively handled by the adopters, it could be overcome in practice. If the judge is not satisfied that the prospective adopters will be of the kind who are able to handle that question in the way that it should be handled, it is perfectly simple: he will not make an adoption order. The backstop in all these cases is that you have a judge. He is the one who decides whether the adoption is in the best interests of the child, whether the adoption is by a married couple, an unmarried couple, or a homosexual couple.
I now turn to the question of how we should all vote. Until the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, was tabled, there was no amendment to exclude homosexual couples as such from the adoption process. Therefore, unless that amendment is adopted, it is really a case of all or nothing. The arguments in favour of allowing unmarried couples of different sex to adopt are overwhelming. In my view, those arguments should not be displaced by a concernI accept that there is a concern, but it is unguarded, ungrounded concernin respect of homosexual couples. I say "ungrounded" because if the judge has any doubt at all about the suitability of the homosexual couple, he will not make the order.
It is always good to return to the facts of an actual case. So, to conclude, perhaps I may give your Lordships the facts relating to the Scottish case to which I referred earlier. It concerned a very seriously disabled child. The prospective adopters were two male nurses living together in a homosexual relationship who were very experienced in dealing with that child's disability. The court held that adoption by that couple was that child's, not best, but his only, chance in life. It seems to me that we should not deprive such children in the future of adoption by such adopters by passing the noble Lord's amendment.
Lord Ackner: My Lords, before my noble and learned friend sits down, perhaps he can help me on a small point. He has sought to adopt what the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, said. Does my noble and learned friend believe that that amendment would stand up to the challenge in our courts in relation to the human rights legislation?
Lord Lloyd of Berwick: My Lords, I fear that my noble and learned friend has misunderstood me. I am sure that it was my fault. I was not supporting the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, in my remarks; I was simply saying that all the arguments that he advanced in favour of allowing unmarried couples to adopt seem to me unanswerable.
Baroness O'Cathain: My Lords, many noble Lords will be aware that I am taking part in this Report stage of the Bill despite the fact that I did not take part in either the Second Reading debate or in Grand
Committee. I do so because, the evening before she died, our late noble friend Lady Young asked me to do so. She had been feeling frail and wished to ensure that the cause of children would not go by default if she had not recovered before today. Your Lordships should note: "the cause of children". Sadly, within 12 hours of my being able to take that concern off her shoulders, she died. It is, without doubt, the most difficult task that I have undertaken in more than 11 years in your Lordships' House. I am so burdened by the determination not to let down that wonderful woman, yet so conscious that, however well I put the case, I shall never be able to do it as well as she would have done. Although I feel burdened, I also feel passionate about the imperative shared by every noble Lord in this House, so ably described by my noble friend Lord Howe, that children in institutional or foster care should be given the chance of being loved and cared for in a stable, secure, safe and permanent home.This Bill is about childrendamaged children, who have had a horrible existence for the first few months and years of their lives. The noble Lord, Lord Alli, said that he was ashamed by the treatment of the Bill in the media. I impress upon him that the only interest for me in this Bill is the security and protection of children.
I remind your Lordships that this Bill is the result of a strong personal commitment of the Prime Minister, who introduced the review on adoption with the words:
The interest of the Prime Minister and the production of the publications that I have just listed have already borne fruit, even though the Bill has not yet completed its progress through Parliament. The fact that the Prime Minister drew attention to the belief that,
As Lady Young said in her powerful Second Reading speech on 10th June (at cols. 30 to 33 of Hansard), the Government's own target is almost certain to be reached. This was confirmed to me by the noble Lord the Minister only yesterday, and it could well be that the target of 3,800 in 20042005 will be met this year. I stress that that is out of a total of 5,000 children seeking adoption each year. That is a significant and welcome development.
My noble friend Lord Jenkin said that the solution to the problem of getting more children out of care and into adoption is much too restrictive in the original
Bill. But following the procedures set out in the Bill, and following the interest generated by the Prime Minister, it seems that there is not the same concern about so many children remaining in care. In a few years' time, there could well be no children left for adoption each year.Prior to the Prime Minister's intervention, over 90 per cent of the would-be adopters were either turned down or gave up the process because they had such dreadful experiences of the immensely long drawn-out process lasting up to three years or more. Those who were turned down were sometimes given reasons such as: you are too rich; you are too poor; you are too fat; you live in too big a house; you have too many books; you go to church. When the Bill becomes law, the Government hopeas do we allthat these ridiculous attitudes will be a thing of the past as the processes being put in place should guarantee that many more of those 90 per cent would-be adopters who are either turned down or give up in despair will have their wish fulfilled, and that many more children will be adopted. It is not too far-fetched to envisage a situation where there could be a shortage of children to be adopted.
There is certainly no need to extend the range of would-be adopters beyond the current situation; namely, married couples and single people. Yet that is precisely what the amendment introduced in the other place seeks to do.
I state as an aside that the UK is a signatory to the 1967 European Convention on Adoption, whereby only married couples and single people can adopt. In addition, the European Court of Human Rights recently ruled that homosexuals have no right to adopt. Are the Government aware of those two points, or are they just ignoring international law?
By extending the category of would-be adopters to include homosexual couples of both genders and cohabiting heterosexuals, I contend that the Bill is now being used as an implement of social engineering. Under the Bill, adoption agencies would not be able to give preference to married couples. That removes the status of marriage, no matter what people say, and reduces it to the equivalence of "couples" of the same gender or couples who do not make a permanent commitment to each other. I shall not dwell on the point further as it has been so ably dealt with by my noble friend Lord Howe.
I find it quite amazing that the extension of the range of would-be adopters to include the groups I have just mentioned was not in the Labour Party manifesto, not in the Prime Minister's review, not in the White Paper, and not in the Bill when it was first introduced in the Commons.
What is the justification for amending the Bill in the other place? Is it political correctness? Is it social engineering? Orperish the thoughtis it the permanent downgrading of marriage and the family?
I repeat that it is the children I am concerned about. I am certainly not concerned about political correctness or social engineering. These children do
not have a voice. They cannot object to being a pawn in the political correctness game or being a means of achieving social engineering.The Adoption and Children Bill is a Bill for the protection of children. It up to usevery one of usto protect them. Let us remind ourselves that these children have never had a chance. Now, as a result of the Bill, they will have a much better chance of being brought up in a loving family situation with both male and female role models. They can begin to experience, enjoy and benefit from a family who love them and treat them as their own. Minority adult groups have a voice. Children do not have a voice.
There are five documented instances of government statements opposing homosexual adoption. Indeed, only last November, the Health Minister, Jacqui Smith, rejected amendments in another place, saying that they would create complex legal problems for children which the Bill could not address. In May this year, the Government did a complete U-turn. Suddenly, the whole process of the Bill has been hi-jacked.
So far as I can establish, no lobby organisation for cohabiting heterosexual couples exists. They certainly do not seem to be pressing for the law to be changed. Most cohabiting couples marry in any case, and if a cohabiting couple feel that they wish to adopt and thereby make a permanent longstanding commitment to a child, why not make a permanent longstanding commitment to each otherthereby offering more permanence and security to the adopted child?
What does the government U-turn mean for the protection of children? All the research shows that children do best when they are raised by married couples. I fear that the Government are ignoring that research.
I wish to refer briefly to two different findings of research. An assessment of primary school children in Australia showed that scores in language skills and mathematics for the children of homosexual couples were 29 per cent and 30 per cent lower respectively than for those with married parents. The scores for the children of cohabiting heterosexual couples were 12 per cent and 11 per cent lower than for those with married parents.
Secondly, married parents are statistically much less likely to abuse their children. A British study found that the incidence of child abuse was 33 times higher among children living with their mother and her boyfriend compared to children living with their biological, married parents.
The noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, gave a searing example of how his foster brother, James, had his skull damaged by James's mother's boyfriend. I know that, for some people, opinion polls set the blood racing
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