Adoption and Children Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 3:30 pm on 16 October 2002.

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Photo of Earl Howe Earl Howe Conservative 3:30, 16 October 2002

My Lords, as ever, I am grateful to the noble Earl for that clarification. To cite individual cases is, by definition, to be anecdotal. To be anecdotal tempts us to ignore the generality. That amounts, I believe, to being blase over the future welfare of children in this context who come from troubled, disruptive and often from loveless backgrounds.

All the evidence shows that the best predictor of a child's well-being, whether we are talking about educational attainment, health, employment, avoidance of drug taking, teenage pregnancy, crime or whatever, is that the child has parents who are married.

Marriages of course do fail. But when a couple divorce it is for the matrimonial court to decide how best to protect the welfare of any children in the division of the couple's property. The law of property, as it relates to marriage, is well-established. Children of unmarried couples do not enjoy the same protection. This summer the Law Commission published a report, Sharing Homes, examining the property rights of people who live together outside marriage. It makes sobering reading.

If one shares a flat or a house with someone who legally owns it and one then parts from that person on less than amicable terms, the law deals one a very poor hand of cards as regards claiming a share of the property value. Resorting to the courts is fraught with uncertainty. When it comes to any other assets of your partner which one previously shared, one has no cards in one's hand at all. An adopted child caught in the middle is placed in an extremely vulnerable position. Where will the child be housed? How will he be supported if he stays with a parent without means?

The Law Commission concluded that in many respects it would be impossible to amend the law to ensure fairness in this area. The Civil Partnerships Bill introduced this year by the noble Lord, Lord Lester, might have held out some remedies. But it is not on the statute book, or anywhere near. I was chided in Grand Committee for raising the issue of property rights as if it were of minor importance. It is not of minor importance, and I make no apology for so doing. It is yet another reason why the stability of marriage as a socially-recognised contract is to be preferred above informal types of relationship in the context we are now debating.

That leads me to my final point. My greatest objection, if the Bill were to pass as it stands, is that for the purposes of adoption the law would place marriage, cohabitation and gay partnerships on a platform of legal equivalents. The fact of a couple being married would carry no weight at all in any choice between alternative sets of adopters. That defies common sense. Its consequences would be perverse. We can easily envisage a situation in which social workers felt that a particular child's needs were best met by a married couple but were inhibited from saying so because of the fear that this might lead to an accusation of prejudice against unmarried or gay people. I cannot see how we can possibly guard against that.

The same difficulty manifests itself in the assessment work of adoption agencies. Adoption agencies will come under pressure to have an overtly even-handed policy towards married, unmarried and same sex couples in the way they operate their assessment procedures. The end result will be that instead of 95 per cent of adoptions being with married couples, as they are at the moment, married adopters will be increasingly, and unreasonably, sidelined in favour of the other two groups. In those circumstances there would effectively be a bias operating against marriage.

When I hear people say, as I have recently, that the debate is about equal opportunities for married, unmarried and gay people, I truly despair. This debate has nothing to do with equal opportunities for adults; it is about doing what is best for children. I say to the House that the cause of children's welfare is gravely damaged by those who champion the Bill in its present form. I hope noble Lords will not be tempted to follow them. I beg to move.