Clause 41 — Child to live with adopters before application

Part of Orders of the Day — Adoption and Children Bill — [2nd Allotted Day] – in the House of Commons at 5:00 pm on 16 May 2002.

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Photo of Peter Lilley Peter Lilley Conservative, Hitchin and Harpenden 5:00, 16 May 2002

I approach this subject in the light of my experience as Secretary of State for Social Security, when it became clear to me, in terms of social problems, that children who had had the advantage of adoption tended to do as well if not better than average, whereas those who remained in care did far worse than average. Four times as many were unemployed. They were 12 times as likely to have no educational qualifications, 40 times as likely to go to prison, 60 times as likely to be roofless and 66 times as likely to have children who had to go into care, thus perpetuating the process.

I start from a presumption that we should encourage more and speedier adoption. When the British Agencies for Adopting and Fostering wrote to me, saying

"it does not make sense to exclude a significant proportion of the adult population from consideration" for adopting children, I was inclined to agree. I started from the position expressed by Mr. Hinchliffe, which was also described very lucidly by Jonathan Shaw. Although marriage is undoubtedly preferable—the ideal is that children should be brought up in a loving, married family—if there are not enough loving, married families to go around, in principle I would be prepared to widen the scope. After all, we allow children in care to be brought up by people who may be married or single, cohabiting or not, homosexual or otherwise.

I agree with the BAAF that it would not make sense to exclude a significant proportion of the adult population from consideration for adoption. However, no one is, in fact, excluded. Under present law, no one is legally excluded from consideration for adoption: one may be married or unmarried, cohabiting or single, gay or lesbian, young or old, or black or white: one is legally entitled to adopt. Last year, 300 single people adopted children—about 6 per cent. of the total number adopting. I do not believe that the change proposed will increase by one person the number of people with the right to adopt. The numbers argument is therefore bogus.

Having vaguely acknowledged the situation, but without making it clear, BAAF went on to say:

"BAAF research shows that many unmarried couples do not come forward for this reason"— namely, that they cannot adopt collectively as a couple; they can only adopt if one of them acts as sole legal adoptive parent. I phoned BAAF to ask for the evidence and spoke to Mrs. Felicity Collier, the chief executive of the organisation, who wrote the letter. She said that there was no evidence to that effect as such. In the letter, she was referring to a study of 500 parents during national adoption week. At the beginning of the sample, 15 per cent. were unwed; at the end, only 8 per cent. of those who carried it through to close to completion were unmarried. A disproportionate number of unmarried people had dropped out, but they were not asked why. No information was gathered on that.

So the assertion in the letter was not backed up by evidence. Indeed, no hon. Member has produced evidence today to support the idea that a significant number of people are put off adopting by the legal situation. It is certainly the case that no one is legally excluded from adopting.