Clause 13 - Power to charge
Children and Adoption Bill [Lords]
12:15 pm
Tim Loughton (Shadow Minister (Children), Health; East Worthing and Shoreham, Conservative)
Clause 13 is a bit more contentious. We have tabled three amendments to tease out what the Government are trying to charge for. Amendment No. 5 would add the requirement that any fee charged by the authorities must be proportionate and not completely block the prospective adopter from going ahead with the process. Amendment No. 44 repeats that requirement in subsection (3). Amendment No. 6 is on the same theme and would add a paragraph (c) to subsection (4), under which the Secretary of State and the Welsh Assembly may, if they decide to set a fee, decide whether to charge a flat fee or differential rates, or waive a fee in certain cases; they need to say why. We should like a proper breakdown of the costs that have been borne and that give rise to the fee. We cannot see exactly where the costs will come from and what value-added work will have been done.
I have already mentioned that it costs up to £10,000, typically, for a prospective adopter privately to complete an overseas adoption. That usually involves employing a private social worker to make an assessment overseas, and it is a long and cumbersome process, which can take well over a year. In some cases it can take years. All that the Secretary of State must do is rubber-stamp that application. Not much value-added work will be done.
We asked the Minister about this and one of her officials came up with a ballpark figure of £800 as the charge to facilitate clause 13. It is only reasonable that a prospective adopter who is asked to pay a fee should have a proper tariff and bill showing the work that has been done to give rise to it. I hope—and the Government have suggested—that the fee is intended only to cover costs, and not to make a profit out of international adoption.
We should like amendment No. 6 to result in an undertaking that full details will be provided of how the charges arise. We hope that amendments Nos. 5 and 44 will gain us an indication that the Government will take into account the financial circumstances of the prospective adopter. I can think of cases involving, for example, members of certain Church groups linked to communities in the third world, who want to adopt a child from one of those developing countries. They are people without recourse to large amounts of money. We are not talking about cosy middle-class families making a lifestyle decision to spend some of their money to adopt for whatever reason.
It has been indicated that the Secretary of State could waive the fee if the adoption had a family connection, but we should like some elaboration on other circumstances in which the fee would be waived altogether. We want greater articulation from the Minister on how means-tested the fees are likely to be, although they will not be strictly means-tested, and what the charges will be for.
BAAF has drawn attention to problems with the clause. One of its briefings says:
“It is hard to see why one group of UK residents—prospective intercountry adopters—should be singled out for payment of a fee for the provision of a service such as this. It is disingenuous to argue that this is a service for adults rather than a service to children. The procedures are in place principally to protect children, not to ‘smooth the wheels’ for adopters. Any suggestion that public money should only be spent on safeguarding the welfare of children indigenous to this country is surely repugnant both morally and in the light of international obligations.”
BAAF believes that
“any additional financial burden on intercountry adopters may run the risk of a minority seeking to circumvent procedures, thereby putting some children at risk. It must be borne in mind that the procedures apply equally to those who wish to adopt a relative from overseas, and it could be a grave disservice to some children if the opportunity for family life with members of their extended family were denied them for financial reasons ... Given this government’s commitment to address poverty issues worldwide, the imposition of this particular charging mechanism seems quite inappropriate.”
We are not talking about a large amount of money, in the greater scheme of things. Some 300 inter-country adoptions are taking place, and we are talking about charging hundreds, hopefully, rather than thousands. On that basis, there seems to be a big disconnect between the cost of domestic adoption procedures and the additional costs that the Government are now trying to impose on international adopters.
These are probing amendments to tease out exactly what charges will be involved and why the Government think that they are justified in charging them, and to get further detail on how people who are not in a position to pay the additional fees will be helped out rather than completely deterred from going ahead with international adoptions that could strongly favour the welfare of the child.