Forced Adoption in the UK — House of Commons, 2018-07-12
Topic: Civil Rights
Stephen Twigg (Labour, Centre-left): I thank and pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern), who set out the case for this motion incredibly powerfully. Hers will be a tough speech for me to follow I thank the campaigners from the Movement for an Adoption Apology—known colloquially, as MAA—for their ongoing efforts, with others, to push this Government and previous Governments for many years on the important demand for an apology. In particular, I thank my step-mum, Jean Robertson-Molloy, who is present today. Jean is one of the founding members of the MAA campaign. I join my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South in thanking our good friend and former colleague, Ann Keen, who is also present. The MAA campaigners have experienced first hand many of the issues that my hon. Friend set out so powerfully in her opening speech and have provided testimony that reflects the pain and suffering that they have experienced. I am also thinking today of the thousands of women and, indeed, their children who still find the situation too painful to discuss openly. As my hon. Friend set out, they all deserve an apology for the ordeal that they were put through As has already been said, forced adoption is not just part of our hidden past as a country, but part of the hidden pasts of many other countries around the world. Many women who suffered in Australia or Ireland have now had some form of inquiry or apology from their Government. In New Zealand, the new Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, is currently considering asking a New Zealand select committee to investigate how previous Governments in that country handled forced adoption, yet we still await any inquiry or apology here. We have an opportunity to learn from these close allies of the United Kingdom—Australia, New Zealand and Ireland—and, crucially, to develop a process that learns from what happened in those three countries and really engages with the voices and experiences of the women and children affected at the time At heart this is a human rights issue. Article 8 of the Human Rights Act 1998 outlines "the right to respect for…family and private life" In the case of forced adoptions, it is surely absolutely clear that the parents and children have been denied that most basic of human rights. If the Government accept that that is the case, surely we have a responsibility as a country and they have a responsibility as a Government to address the matter urgently As my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South said, five years ago the then Prime Minister of Australia, Julia Gillard, apologised on behalf of the Australian Government to people who had been affected by forced adoption or removal policies. A Senate inquiry, which had been the impetus for Julia Gillard’s apology, found that babies were taken illegally by doctors, nurses, social workers and religious figures and adopted by married couples. The mothers were often coerced—sometimes even drugged—and their children were taken away from them without their consent. Original birth certificates were then sealed away and a new one was issued that left no mention of the birth parents. This story is all too familiar to the women and girls in this country who were caught in similar circumstances from the 1950s onwards As my hon. Friend said, only last month the Taoiseach of the Republic of Ireland, Leo Varadkar, recognised the issues surrounding the forced adoption of children in Ireland. He apologised to 126 people who had been adopted illegally between 1946 and 1969, saying the apology was part of "another chapter from the very dark history of our country" His Government committed to an independent investigation to review the records of adoption services, which will almost certainly lead to the discovery that more births were illegally registered in Ireland. Apologising for the actions of past Governments is not straightforward. The fact that both Ireland and Australia have been able to do so, and that they have not simply apologised but have held thorough and in-depth investigations, shows that it is possible to achieve some justice—delayed justice—for people who have been caught up in this scandal. I urge the Minister and the Prime Minister to follow the example of those close allies and devise a way to apologise. An apology is one aspect of justice. When I spoke to the campaigners, they made it very clear to me that they want not only an apology, but a process in which their voices are heard and in which their experiences are taken into full account. Their voices are, of course, those that we need to listen to I want to spend a moment or two now recalling the testimony of some of them. Helen Jeffreys gave birth to a son in Leeds in 1965. When her son was two months old, her social worker refused them any more help and said that they had to leave the mother and baby home in which they were staying. Eventually, Helen had to give up her son for adoption. At the time, this meant that she would never get to see him again, as the legislation that is now in place to request a birth certificate on an 18th birthday did not exist at that time. Helen said: "I was 18 and a perfectly competent mother. I wanted to keep him." Sadly, as we have heard from my hon. Friend and as I am sure we will hear from other accounts during the debate this afternoon, Helen was coerced into giving her son up for adoption Although much of the testimony that I have read and have heard about at first hand does involve children being forcibly removed from their parents, this scandal forces us to engage with some of the wider social attitudes that prevailed in the 1950s and the 1960s. Young, single mothers were often ostracised from their communities and their families simply because of their pregnancies. They might have been referred to as "trouble makers", "deviants", or morally or mentally at fault. In a society where that narrative was widely shared by families, by communities, by Churches and by the Government and Parliament at the time, it was no wonder that many women felt pressured and that they had no other choice but to give up their children Lorna gave birth to a girl in 1969. Her boyfriend had thrown her out of the house while she was pregnant and she had ended up squatting in London. As with many women at the time, her family were strict, so she did not feel that she had the option to go back to the family home. She was placed in the care of a religious social worker who forced her to read the Bible regularly simply to account for the dreadful sin of being a single mother-to-be. The Church told her, with no empathy and no compassion, that she had no choice but to give up her daughter for adoption. A few months after the baby was born, Lorna gave her up for adoption and they did not see each other for another 36 years Those are just two examples. There are hundreds of Helens and Lornas who have been caught up in this national scandal. They have been waiting patiently for years—in fact, for decades—for some kind of explanation why they were forced to give up their children and for some kind of justice. Lorna says: "Although an apology cannot heal the pain of separation that thousands of women like myself have had to deal with, I would like to hear someone in authority say that simple word ‘Sorry’. We have a right to it." These women, these mothers, absolutely have the right to an apology. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for giving us this opportunity today to amplify support in this Chamber for that call. In her 2013 apology, Julia Gillard said: "As a nation, we’ve got to be prepared to look in an unflinching way at our past and when we see a wrong, we have got to be prepared to recognise it, name it and act to redress it." This is surely something from which all Governments can learn. I hope that it is something that this Government will take note of and act on. The women caught up in this scandal have been trying for too long to achieve justice. Now, the Government have an opportunity to act.