HL Deb 18 March 1924 vol 56 cc808-17

Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.

THE DUKE OF ATHOLL

My Lords, I am aware that there is a good deal of business on the Order Paper to-day and that there are Questions following this Bill with which many of your Lordships are most anxious to deal. I will, therefore, be very much briefer in explaining the provisions of this measure than I should otherwise have been. I should also like to explain that there are three other Bills on this subject now under consideration in another place. That, at least, shows that considerable interest is being taken in the question. Of these other Bills I will merely say that one of them is simply a sketch in outline and would have to be very much more amplified before it could become law. Another is much on the lines of this Bill, but, that Bill having been introduced rather in a hurry in order to obtain discussion elsewhere, its promoters have not had an opportunity of bringing it quite so much up to date as the Bill which is now before your Lordships. The third Bill in the other place has not yet been printed, but it is, in effect, I believe, the same as this one and is intended to apply this Bill to Scotland. That is, of course, a matter which can be dealt with later on in this Bill if it continues its existence.

It is not for me to advise His Majesty's Government, but I would point out that these Bills are not intended to torpedo each other. They are really intended to assist a common cause. There are good points in all of them, and I believe a great deal of time and trouble would be saved if it were possible for this Bill to be considered by a Joint Select Committee of members of the two Houses under a Chairman of judicial experience. All the Bills on the subject might be remitted to that Committee, and your Lordships would have the benefit of their experience on the later stages of this Bill, which, I feel certain, must be the basis on which any legislation is founded. Another way of dealing with the Bill might be to remit it to a Departmental Committee. But we have already had one Departmental Committee upon the subject and this Bill very closely follows that Committee's proposals. Unless the Government take the Bill up themselves and push it through as quickly as they can, a Departmental Committee, I think, would only delay matters. The evidence given before that Departmental Committee was published in 1920 and shows the necessity for legislation on this subject.

I will not amplify the point now, but I would point out that Britain is alone amongst English-speaking countries and, indeed, amongst most of the civilised countries of the world, in having no adoption laws. The general purpose of this Bill is to provide that when children are adopted they shall, so far as is possible and advisable, be legally adopted, thus giving the child who is adopted the same status and privileges, subject to certain exceptions regarding titles and settled property, as the ordinary child born in more fortunate circumstances. Cases occur in which children are adopted, and the adopters get tired of them. They bring up children in luxury, and then get weary of them; indeed, cases have actually occurred where children have been sent to the workhouse after having experienced the full joys of sumptuous home life for some years. We want to make that impossible. This Bill provides that when a child is adopted, the new parents take on the full responsibility of parenthood, but it is also possible under this Bill for the new parents, in cases approved by the court, to get rid of these children, provided they can get them suitably re-adopted.

Take the contrary. Cases occur where the real parents of a child who has been adopted leave the child with the adopters until the child has become a real part of the home life of the adopters, and then claim the child back and become little better than blackmailers. This Bill provides that once parents have let their child go, and it has been adopted by mutual agreement by the third party, the third party takes complete control and its attendant responsibilities. In addition, this Bill provides that the adopted child shall be regarded as a child more or less of the same blood as that of its adopter. The reasons for this are very obvious; they are principally reasons of morality and for purposes of marriage. The child is brought into the scope of kindred and affinity which, of course, is an absolute necessity in such cases. Questions of succession to titles and of certain forms of settled estate have been carefully safeguarded. I will not detain your Lordships with regard to those points now. They are matters that we can easily discuss in Committee.

Every care has been taken to make the provisions in the Bill fair to all three parties concerned. We have decided, after careful consideration, to keep the question of inspection of adopted children right outside the Bill. People's own children are not inspected, and why should their adopted children be inspected any more than others ? There are plenty of regulations affecting parents' duties to their own children, and I see no reason for making any differentiation in these cases. The question of secrecy in dealing with cases, so far as it is desirable or necessary, has been provided for. Those who wish to adopt a child have to apply to a recognised authority, and the authority that we have suggested is a county court. This follows the recommendations of Sir Alfred Hopkinson's Committee. However, our minds are perfectly open on this as on other points in the Bill.

The. Bill is a non-political and non-Party measure. It deals with a question which every thinking man and woman who is interested in social reform in this country, quite irrespective of Party, knows to be urgent, and, if other Par- liamentary exigencies admit, I have little doubt that, if the members of this House and another place who are interested in the matter could meet, we could arrive at general agreement in the matter. It would then be open to any Government either to adopt the Bill itself or give facilities for it to be passed through all its stages. It seems to me almost hopeless, in the present congestion of business in another place, to get any Bill discussed and passed through the necessary stages, unless something of this sort is clone. It is far more easy to discuss a measure of this kind in the more placid atmosphere of your Lordships' House and, if I may say so with all respect, if your Lordships will assist me in getting this Bill passed, it will be one more testimony to the fact that the House of Lords is not indifferent to the social welfare of the people of this country. I beg to move.

Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a—(The Duke of Atholl.)

THE LORD CHANCELLOR

My Lords, with the noble Duke's Bill the Government are in full sympathy; so much so that they are about to take steps in order to make the object one which can be effectively attained. But since Sir Alfred Hopkinson's Committee, in 1921, unfortunately recommended the county court as the tribunal which should determine the question of the propriety of acceding to an application to adopt, there has been a great deal of trouble. All the Bills that are in existence now—and there are several in the other House—take the same course that the noble Duke has taken. They seem to consider it enough to refer the matter to the county court to determine whether an adoption is proper. Not only is that founded on a misapprehension, but it is founded on a failure to realise that what is required can only be supplied by the creation of special machinery. The county court has no machinery which would enable it to pronounce upon such a question as this.

What are the cases ? They fall into two very different classes. One of them is the desire of some benevolent person or persons to adopt a child. That is all right. The legal consequences of that will have, to be ascertained, and that is not a matter of very great difficulty, although it is a matter involving a good deal of technical inquiry into the law. There is another class of case altogether, and a very serious class of case. There are people who adopt children merely in order to get the money that is paid to them for adopting them, and who afterwards do not exercise due care for the child. These cases are far from being uncommon. It is essential to provide against them in any Bill which regulates adoption. In order to provide against that there is required careful inquiry into the circumstances of the person proposing to adopt, and of the child, and, generally, of the situation in which the application to the court is made. The County Court Judge has no machinery which would enable him to make such an inquiry. His function is to decide issues brought before him promptly and simply. He has a registrar, but the registrar is not the person who can be looked to to make such inquiries, nor can the clerk to the registrar (who in these days is often a very ill-paid individual) be expected to do so. The result is that the County Court Judge would have to dispose of this matter summarily. Of course, he would do his best, but he would have to do it without any of that inquiry which the noble Duke desiderates.

The proposition of the Government is to devise special machinery for making the inquiry efficiently. It is necessary to have some body which would report on these applications, after examining into them, before any judicial authority makes a pronouncement upon them. That is the whole essence of the problem. Without the solution of that no progress can be made, and, therefore, although the Government welcome the declaration of its purpose contained in the noble Duke's Bill, they are unable to look upon it as a Bill which could be passed into law with the prospect of doing any real good. If the noble Duke likes to take a Second Reading, with your Lordships' assent, well and good. It will stand on record as another declaration in favour of the principle, but the Government intend to appoint a Committee to inquire at once and deal with the highly technical matter of which I spoke just now, a matter which, probably, cannot be dealt with by any Joint Committee of the two Houses. It requires experts to consider it. On that footing I offer no objection to the Second Reading of the Bill. I only desire to warn the noble Duke of the position with which we shall be faced in the future.

VISCOUNT KNUTSFORD

My Lords, I know your Lordships are anxious to get to the discussion which is to come on later, and I promise you I will be very short. I must protest against this Bill because it does not go far enough. All it, does is to protect the adopter of a child. It is illegal now to make an agreement to adopt a child; an agreement of that sort is not worth the paper on which it is written. The law does not allow parents to rid themselves of the legal liability to support their children, and it is quite right, therefore, as the noble Duke has pointed out, that not only in this country but in every other country we should give a person who adopts a child a legal position and protection and some safeguard against parents who have deserted a child coming forward ten or twenty years afterwards, when the child is a useful member of society, and claiming it, and very often using the affection of the person who has adopted the child to blackmail him for money. This Bill would secure that, and, so far, it is right, but it does not go far enough.

It only gives legal sanction and recognition to those who seek it; only to those people who go to the county court, or whatever the authority may be, and ask for sanction for the adoption of a child. It does not touch those who traffic in child life; it does not touch those who make a business of getting rid of unwanted children. It leaves them to go on with this abominable traffic unmolested. There are many people, as no doubt your Lordships know, who will take children and insure their lives for the purpose of getting the insurance money. There are people who will take a sum down when adopting a child, and that child very soon becomes an unwanted encumbrance. Only last week I came across two gross cases of neglect of an adopted child. In one case the poor little child was indecently assaulted by her adopted father—I hate to use the word father in such a connection—and she was too frightened to give evidence in court. In another ease a man and woman who were cohabitating had already planted out, three of their children, and in the third case a man and woman were proved to have received £300 for adopting no fewer than ten children. All these people are left untouched by this Bill and allowed to go on with this traffic. I notice that the noble Duke shakes his head, and I always think that if anyone contradicts me he, is right, but I have studied the Bill with great care and there is nothing in it which makes the registration of any adopted child compulsory.

The Committee which sat in 1920 reported as follows:— The establishment of a legal sanction for adoption "— that is, this Bill— will leave untouched a large number of cases where legal sanction is not sought for…. There must be control to eliminate bad homes and bad surroundings. The absence of this "— just listen to this— has resulted in an undesirable traffic in child life with which no one can interfere. The time has come when the State should have cognisance of all adoptions. And they recommended that— any individual or association who arrange for the transfer or entire control of a child should be legally obliged to notify the fact to the local authority of the place where the child will reside. No one in this House will deny the few minutes we give now to protect these children. Every board of guardians in England has petitioned that the registration of the adoption of children should be made compulsory, and if this Bill is amended so as to make notification of adoption compulsory, we shall not only safeguard the adopters of children but we shall put an end to this abominable traffic in child life. These children have no voice, no vote themselves. They have only one life, and it is "up to us" to see that that life is not one of long and intolerable misery.

LORD BANBURY OF SOUTHAM

My Lords, no one can have listened to the speech of the noble Viscount who has just addressed the House without realising the desirability of an extension of the provisions of this Bill with regard to the adoption of children, but so far as the other part of the measure is concerned, I hope the noble Duke will agree to leave it out, when we come to Committee. It deals with property, and it says that where a child is adopted that child, so far as regards property, shall be placed in the same position as though he were the adopter's own child. You have done in the last few days a good deal of mischief so far as property is concerned. There is the Legitimacy Bill, the effect of which no one can foretell, and I really cannot see why, in a Bill dealing with the adoption of children, you should bring in new laws relating to property. Supposing I adopt a child and have property of my own to leave, there is nothing to prevent me leaving it to that child. I can execute a will and leave that property, but under the Bill, if I die intestate, that child comes into my property. There are provisions with regard to settlement, and what effect they will have when they come before a Judge of the High Court I cannot say. But it is a dangerous thing in a Bill of this sort to confuse it by bringing in certain provisions which deal with the distribution of property. I shall support: most earnestly anything which would remedy the evils which the noble Viscount has mentioned, but I hope the Bill will be confined to evils connected with the adoption of children, and that in Committee we shall leave out any new proposals dealing with property or the settlement of property.

LORD GORELL

My Lords, I do not intend to stand for more than one moment between your Lordships and the subsequent Orders on the Paper. I raised the question of the adoption of children last month, and I have a Question on the Paper for next week dealing with the subject. I had intended to say very much what the noble Viscount, Lord Knutsford, has already said about this Bill. The noble Duke who introduced it said that it followed the findings of the Departmental Committee which reported in February, 1921. It follows only one-third of their recommendations. The Report of that Committee is divided into three parts. This was the first of the matters which they declared to be urgent. The second of the matters, which also they declared to be urgent, was the whole question of safeguarding children who were adopted from improper motives where full legal adoption was not desired. That seems to me to be far the most important side of child adoption, and far the most urgent aspect of it, and there is no Bill of which I am aware that deals with the subject at all.

The third subject with which Sir Alfred Hopkinson's Committee dealt was that which is now the basis of the Legitimacy Bill, so that we have two Bills to deal with the first and third matters upon which the Committee reported, and none to deal with the second. I rise only to say that I hope to pursue a little further, when we have more time, the very important subject of the safeguarding of children who are really being made victims of child murder and of the traffic in infant life to which Lord Knutsford has referred. I hope that I shall be able to obtain a little more information from His Majesty's Government next week than was accorded to your Lordships last month.

THE DUKE OF ATHOLL

My Lords, I listened with pleasure to the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Banbury of Southam, on this subject. I will only say that in preparing this Bill I knew well that we should have his meticulous eye watching it, and that I am very much relieved that he has at least-approved the principle of the Bill. With regard to the inheritance of property, I think, if I may say so with respect, that the noble Lord is entirely in error in his objection to the provisions of this Bill, because we have provided for such cases as he mentioned and are quite willing to make further provision, in Committee, if this should prove necessary. It is surely very easy for a testator, when he adopts a child, to alter his will, if he so desires, by providing that the adopted child shall not succeed, and there is nothing to prevent his leaving all or none of his money to such a child. So far as settlements are concerned, the Bill expressly rules out settlements made before the child was adopted. The noble Lord has suggested that a testator might have no knowledge of this Bill, but as he can only adopt a child under its provisions there does not seem to be much force in that part of his argument. We can have the matter out, however, in Committee. The noble Lord and I do not always disagree when it really comes down to business, and we have had very many years' experience of Bills of this sort.

With regard to the remarks of the noble Viscount, Lord Knutsford, I was not prepared to bring in a compulsory Bill because I was not at all sure how your Lordships would receive it, but if there is anything which your Lordships' House desires to do to strengthen the Bill, I can assure, both the noble Viscount and the noble Lord, Lord Gorell, who spoke just now, that I shall not stand in the way of any suggestion which I consider at all reasonable. As for the proposal put forward by the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack, I feel very gratified, and I am sure we are all glad to hear that the Government really mean to tackle the subject seriously. The invitation which the noble Viscount puts forward is certainly not one that I should refuse. If the Government set up a Committee of Inquiry, I hope it will be a real Committee of Inquiry set up without delay and with the real purpose of getting the Bill passed. In the meantime, the noble and learned Viscount suggested that this Bill should be read a second time by your Lordships' House, and I naturally concur in that view. I hope that your Lordships will agree to give it a Second Reading now, with a view to considering it further on a later stage. In view of what the noble and learned Viscount has said, I can assure your Lordships that I shall "ca' canny" so far as the Committee stage is concerned, so that we shall have ample time to consider all these matters.

On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.