Angela Watkinson

Conservative Party | Upminster

Adoption

This speech was part of a debate in the House of Commons.

I shall extract certain comments from my speech to enable another hon. Member to follow me.

The Bill says relatively little about birth parents, especially where adoption is opposed. I understand that about 60 per cent. of adoption proceedings are opposed by parents. We heard some gruelling accounts from my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier) of dreadful suffering at the hands of birth parents, and from the hon. Member for Blackpool, North and Fleetwood (Mrs. Humble) of repeated unsuccessful attempts to reunite a child with its parents, but they are not typical, and we should be careful not to generalise. Local authorities are large professional organisations and birth parents are individuals. They are laymen. Under stress conditions, they depend totally on representatives at adoption hearings and their chances of success are poor.

We also hear little about sibling groups and the advisability of keeping them together. I have been very surprised at a case in my constituency. I defer to hon. Members, who obviously have much more expertise in this sector than I have, but there is no presumption in favour of the birth mother up to the point of adoption, even when the problems that led to children being taken into care have been overcome, even if she is now in a stable and established relationship, even if the new partner wants the children back as well and is equally committed, even if the home circumstances have improved and are now suitable for family life, and even where the prospective adoptive parents have rejected one of the sibling group. The children's wishes are to be returned to the mother.

I was surprised to learn that local authorities put more weight on the period, in this case 10 months, which the remaining siblings have spent in the pre-adoption placement. That begs the point that longer periods will influence the outcome of adoption proceedings and that the length of the pre-adoption period is outside the control of the birth parents. If there is a good chance of the reunited family being successful, surely that would be the best outcome for the children: to be with their own siblings and their birth parents.

Clause 44 states that an adoption order will "extinguish" the birth parents' parental responsibility. It is an irrevocable transfer from a child's birth family to the new adoptive family. Adoption should therefore be for only those children who cannot live with their birth families. I should like the Bill to include greater protection for sibling groups, ideally keeping them together, and for the birth parents and their rights when circumstances have changed, before the adoption has been formalised. I suggest that greater protection on both those points would be in the best interests of the child.