Children and Adoption Bill [HL]

My Lords, I very much share the concerns expressed so well by the noble Baroness. In what may appear to be the rather arid terminology we are using in these amendments, it always helps to give a graphic example—I hope this is a graphic example. I have been advised of one case where a local authority wished to place a child with her aunt who lived in Spain, who was the child’s only relative in the whole of Europe. The aunt and her husband already had three young children. The husband was employed in Spain and the two older children were at school there. So, in order to achieve an adoption placement with the aunt it would have been necessary for the aunt, her husband, and, in practice, the other children, to come and live in this country until an application could be made after the child had had her home with the family for 10 weeks. One has to ask where that home would have been—in some temporary lodging or other, very probably. How would that have been funded? Maybe by the local authority, but we do not know. Would the husband have lost his job? Probably, and the family would have been put in the position of being unable to support either this child or the other children. In another case, pending at the moment, a local authority wanted to place a small child with prospective adopters who have already adopted her two brothers. Since the earlier adoption orders were made, the family has moved permanently to the Republic of Ireland. To enable the placement to proceed, the family has contemplated the possibility of arranging for the parents to come to live in temporary accommodation in England for several months, leaving the older children with a relative in Ireland so that they can continue their schooling. Not only would that impose considerable hardship on those older children, but it would mean that there would be no opportunity to test how well the older children adjusted to the presence of the younger ones, or how well the parents would be able to look after the child when they had the older to children to care for as well. The amendment proposed would introduce an element of flexibility to enable the court, where proper safeguards were in place, to make an order that would best meet the needs of the child concerned. The drawback of the Government’s proposals, apart from the disruption to the lives of the prospective adopters, even assuming that they were able to comply, is that the observations of the agency on the development of the child’s relationship with the prospective adopters are bound to take place in artificial surroundings. I suggest to the Minister that this is a matter to which the Government may agree to give some further thought.