My Lords, in what my noble friend Lord Storey called a “progressive and promising Bill”, I will largely confine myself—today, at any rate—to Part 1. I should declare an interest because I was a board member of and legal adviser to Parents for Children, an adoption agency, many years ago and am a patron—one of several who are speaking today—of PAC, which deals with pre and post-adoption support.
Under the invigorating chairmanship of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, I was a member of the Select Committee that played a sort of legislative leapfrog with the Government as they launched proposals into the public domain, so we undertook both pre and post-legislative scrutiny. What most impressed me during our work was the importance of early permanence and the increasing understanding of that and of the importance of identity: the need to know one’s identity and the need for parents to know and understand a child’s identity. It became clear to the Select Committee that many current concerns are more around practice than legislation. The logic of that should perhaps be fewer amendments, which will be a relief to the Minister. We shall see.
We heard that reforms already made to tackle delay in adoption need time to bed in, although they seem to be making a real difference. That went hand in hand with a warning that disruption caused by wholesale changes to the role of local authorities could significantly destabilise their implementation. I am far from convinced that removing local authorities from the adoption approval process is appropriate. Governments like to talk about a light touch; what is in the Bill is potentially very heavy-handed. Like others, I believe that joint working by local authorities with one another and voluntary agencies should be the focus, as well as dealing with what might seem marginal but are obviously quite significant difficulties, such as employment law, single Ofsted inspections and a number of other details.
It is unacceptable that prospective adopters should be deterred because an authority is small or is not willing to share, but better networking and collaboration across the sector must be the answer. I am entirely with the Association of Directors of Children’s Services, which talks about the shortfall not just in absolute numbers but in identifying suitable adopters and the benefit to be gained from local authorities going even further in their collaborative efforts on this. I believe that goes, in part, to pre-adoption support, which I will mention later. We also need to sort out any financial disincentives arising from the operation of fees.
I am very uneasy that the provision in Clause 3, which gives the Secretary of State a power of direction with regard to local authorities without spelling out the criteria for the exercise of that power, could mean that powers are removed from local authorities without certainty that the voluntary sector can cope. I do not think this is a matter for the market.
Going back to the beginning of the Bill and to something that several noble Lords have mentioned, the Bill states that when the local authority is “considering” adoption for a child, it must before doing so consider fostering for adoption. I, too, look forward to hearing what the Minister will say on this. The more I think about it, the less clear I am about what “considering” means. It is not a technical term. The Government’s own guidance says that the point at which it is appropriate to plan for adoption varies from case to case.
I am also worried about the presumption later in the Bill that the involvement of a parent in the life of a child will further the child’s welfare. If the child’s welfare is a paramount consideration, as it is, must be and must remain, how can there be a presumption?
I will continue to sing the Select Committee’s song with regard to ethnicity. The existing framework does not prioritise ethnicity. I do not believe in legislation being used to give messages, but I think that sometimes if you repeal legislation, it does give a message. I agreed with the committee that retaining ethnicity as a factor, listing it as part of the welfare checklist, is important. It is about understanding identity. We heard from the chief executive of PAC in the following terms:
“It should not just be that there has been an attempt to find the right racial family for this child, it has not been possible, and so any family will do. It has to be a family that understands and has committed themselves to that journey”.
That is one of a wide range of issues on which both the adoptive person and the adoptive parent may need support—something that I cannot stress too strongly. I look forward to looking at how the proposed personal budgets will work, given that the availability of sources of support is at least as important. I noted that the amount of the budget comes higher in the list of matters for regulation than description of the services.
During the course of the Bill, I intend to raise the matter of access to information by the descendants of adopted persons, which I know also interests the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss. I do not have time to go into this afternoon, but I understand that the Ministry of Justice is concerned about the scale of the issue. I also know the commitment of my noble friend Lord McNally to freedom of and access to information.
I end with the issue of contact. I was very interested in a report that many noble Lords will have received recently from the University of Oxford and the University of Sussex about what is important in contact. I picked up a lot about the child’s voice being heard. I have pretty much unbounded admiration for people who foster or adopt; it is almost beyond my imagining. I also have a lot of admiration for the social workers involved and for the children who cope and contribute to their own success. It was salutary to hear the point from children during our work on the Select Committee, some of whom said, “They don’t listen to me, because I’m a looked-after child and they are professionals”. Another child said, “People listen only to what they want to hear”. In our scrutiny of this Bill, we need to listen to children very carefully.
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