https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2018-07-12/debates/6F6A5DB8-85C8-4AF8-B627-4A8776AD7843/ForcedAdoptionInTheUKForced Adoption in the UK
12 July 2018
Volume 644
2.45 pm
Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House recognises the pain and suffering that the historical practice of forced adoption caused many women and children; and calls on the Government to issue an apology to women and children affected by that practice.
This is a year of feminism. It is 100 years since the demands for women’s votes were finally heard in this place. What progress we have made in those 100 years! We should be in no doubt, however, that the pace of progress is never constant, and in those 100 years women have needed to fight and fight again to see their rights respected. That is the true story of our past. There is a sadly long list of deeply shameful practices against women that were hidden and tolerated in the past and which colour the treatment of women today. While our past never determines our country’s next steps, it is always the backdrop for our future; the past always sets the scene. That is why historical injustices must be uncovered, understood and acknowledged. Honesty allows us to learn, honesty helps us to change and honesty gives people back the dignity of the truth about what happened to them.
The debate today covers one such practice. Most people in this place will be aware of the way in which young mums were treated in the past. Long before the last Labour Government were successful in their teenage pregnancy strategy to halve teenage pregnancy rates, or before we had the proactive strategies to help young mums that we do today, many young women who had become unexpectedly pregnant were hidden away and told that their child was to be adopted. They were told by representatives of the Church and state that it would be for the best; the aim was to maintain some idea of so-called respectability. This process has long been shrouded in mystery. We know that several Churches were involved, including the Church of England and the Catholic Church, and that this process was not limited to the UK; it happened around the globe Australia and Ireland have already acknowledged the role their Governments played.
Forgive me, Madam Deputy Speaker, if I explain briefly how I came to think about this matter. The story involves two former Members of this House: Gordon Brown and Ann Keen. I had the honour of serving as Gordon’s last Parliamentary Private Secretary. One of the many benefits I have felt from that time has been the pleasure and honour of getting to know Ann Keen, who represented the people of Brentford and Isleworth between 1997 and 2010 and was Gordon’s PPS during his time as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Before she came to the House, Ann served our country as an NHS nurse, and she became one of our Health Ministers in government. I was also lucky to know Ann’s husband, Alan Keen, who represented Feltham and Heston in this place and who was a great friend to many here. I am very pleased that Ann is here today, along with others who experienced historical forced adoption.
Given the events surrounding the Hillsborough disaster, I have some understanding of historical injustices and how they burn. When, some time ago, Ann told me her story, I became very interested in how the historical practice of forced adoption could be brought to light and, what is more, how it came to happen at all.
Since that time, my constituent Sara, an adult whose mum was also treated in this way, has been in touch with me. Sara now runs a small charity that helps people to trace family members. She has explained to me how long-standing distress caused by the practices we will discuss today can cloud a person’s whole life. Sara has suggested to me that the Government might want to consider a small specialised service dedicated to the group affected. I will say more later, but the idea has merit.
It is estimated that about half a million British women were treated in this fashion, all of whom have families who are affected and all of whom must have been profoundly changed by the experience. I have come to see that Ann’s story is typical of many. Ann’s dad was a steelworker at Shotton, which is quite near my constituency, and the family were not at all wealthy. Ann became unexpectedly pregnant in 1966, when an older man with whom she worked forced himself upon her. Her family were horrified and the decision was taken that she would move away, where she would meet a local moral welfare worker that is what social workers used to be called and it was just assumed that the baby would be adopted. This moral welfare worker told Ann that the baby would cause her family hardship. She was told that, if she loved the baby, she would give it away. She was told it was for the best.
Ann ended up in what we think was a home run by the Swansea and Brecon moral welfare association. The home was draconian, and women were forced to clean and undertake menial tasks. From speaking to lots of others who have gone through this, I understand that that was very common. From the many stories of women who were treated just like Ann, there is one consistent impression: it seems obvious that those in positions of power with whom the women came into contact felt that the women ought to be punished. It is almost as if there was an unwritten policy that women ought to be treated badly. We owe it to that generation of women to ask ourselves who decided that they should be treated in that way. Why were the homes run like that? Whose policy was it?
A further crucial fact is that most of the people to whom I have spoken who have experienced forced adoption gave birth in the NHS. The national health service, which we rightly venerate, is part of this story. The midwifes gave the impression to the mums that they knew the babies would be adopted. The women to whom I have spoken have a consistent history of treatment during labour, in that pain relief was withheld. If stitches were required after the birth, as they often are, it was done in the most uncomfortable way possible.
Ann, who later became a nurse, as I said, told me that in hospital she realised she was absolutely powerless. After the birth, mothers were often told, “Your baby is going to be adopted. Don’t get too attached.” Contact with the baby was controlled and restricted in many cases I have read about and, even by the standards of the time, these mothers were treated very differently from other women giving birth. These women were made to feel ashamed of their bodies and of their pregnancies, and that culture of shame was perpetrated by officialdom in one guise or another.
It is a complex history but I, for one, would like to know how it happened. Babies were adopted and, from the accounts I have read and listened to, it is hard to see that any meaningful consent was given. Many adoptive parents, who were dedicated and wonderful people, gave the babies loving homes, and mums were constantly told that it was simply for the best. But even where children were in loving homes, how could it be for the best if it was not really the mother’s decision? That cannot be right. These women seemed to be denied their most basic right, the right to hold their own opinion.
This is my question to the Minister: has anybody checked the historical records to discover what we know about how women were treated and why? Has anyone in government ever looked back over the records that are held about the NHS to find out what the process was for assisting young mums from moral welfare association homes? What is more, who paid for those homes and why? Much may not have been written down, but I find it hard to believe that nothing was written down and that there are no records.
From their accounts, it appears that many of these women were unable to make an informed decision about their pregnancy and adoption because they were told that their family would not get any state support for their child, yet Beveridge’s welfare state existed from 1948 onwards. By the 1960s, though imperfect, it was well developed. I have asked the House of Commons Library what the rules were for supporting children from 1948 onwards, and I am told that there were family benefits available, especially after the creation of child benefit in 1975. Even before that, there was family allowance, which was worth about £800 per year in today’s money in the late 1960s. That information seems to have been hidden from these young mums why? Who decided that it would be?
We can never re-legislate the past we can’t but we must try to understand it. These policies were designed to make a so-called “problem” go away. Society had decided that something that is entirely natural was shameful. Women and children were hidden away to protect the fragile sensibilities of others, and it was a great injustice, and then that culture of shame and terror has made them keep quiet. For far too long, we have been told about this generation of mums, “She gave the baby up”, a phrase that undoubtedly implies consent, but that was never true. It has been a hurtful lie. Women were told that it would be for the best, and then the world was told that that was what they wanted.
Clearly, there has also been a huge impact on the generation of children who were adopted. As I have said, many of the adoptive families will have provided loving and brilliant homes, but the cultural story that these children were “given up for adoption” may well have meant that those adult children still live with the idea that they were not wanted by their birth parents, which in many cases was just not true at all. The long shadow of all this has huge implications for the mental health of the mothers, children and families that these policies affected. For some it has been utterly devastating, and has had the most significant consequences for their lives.
The Government today could assist in setting the story straight and helping people to understand what happened to them. That brings me to my final point the need for an apology. As I have said several times, it is not for this House to legislate over the past, nor is it for us to decide that there ought to be one blanket approach for every family. Many will wish to simply turn a page in their history and move on, but for those living with desperate grief or furious anger there is a course of action that will help: in addition to looking for all government sources of information on this process and publishing them in an appropriate manner, the Prime Minister, on behalf of our nation, should apologise. Julia Gillard, the then Prime Minister of Australia, did so on behalf of her country in 2013 and Leo Varadkar did so on behalf of Ireland this year. There is no reason not to do it and every reason to do it.
As a woman who has experienced the culture of shame that stops women feeling proud and confident in their own skin, I would like to understand this history a little better. Women collectively live in the shadow of these events and hear from their teenage years that their body is something to be embarrassed about. Undoing that cultural attitude requires, for all of us, an acknowledgment of how wrong this course of action was. So here is my request to the Minister: let us collectively tell the truth; acknowledge that the history of women in this country is not just the heroism of the suffrage movement and then the presence of a female Prime Minister, with zero struggles in between; show that the origin of the shame that stops young women standing up for themselves, even now, today, is these dark roots that we are talking about this afternoon; and bring those roots out into the open and say that it was wrong.
In summary, the Government could do three things: First, they could check all official records and documentation for evidence that related to this practice, and publish it. Secondly, they could work with organisations who support people who experienced the consequences of historical forced adoption and do something to help with tracing, counselling and emotional support. We are talking about a relatively discreet group of people and it would not be an investment from government that was needed forever, though it is very much needed now. Lastly, and most crucially, they can say sorry and apologise on behalf of the nation. Simply by doing so, the Prime Minister would make a great difference to all those who were told that the natural function of their body was a shameful thing. Simply by apologising, she would send a message to anyone unexpectedly pregnant today that they ought to expect help and support, and never approbation. Most of all, she would send a message to every woman in this country that our past, where women were blamed and robbed of their power, is finally the past.
2.59 pm
Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)
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.
3.09 pm
Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)
Today is the first anniversary of my maiden speech and this is my 100th contribution in this place. Giving a voice to the voiceless is a central cause that my Labour colleagues and I seek to deliver. Speaking in this debate is a most apt way for me to pursue my purpose in Parliament. I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) and for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) for their touching contributions and for securing this important debate. As a member of the Backbench Business Committee, I was delighted to support the allocation of the debate.
I would like to share directly the story of a woman from my home city of Leeds, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby. Helen Jeffreys was 17 when she gave birth to her baby son, with no support available, no access to advice and certainly no access to any housing or social benefits. Her son was forcibly taken from Helen and placed for adoption. She said:
“We weren’t given a choice—no offer of support at all, I held out until the last possible moment and it was obvious to everyone that I wanted to keep him but he was quite literally dragged out of my arms.”
Helen’s son was born in Leeds, but placed by the Church of England adoption society in York. He was allowed no contact with his birth mother or father. In a world without fertility treatment, there were many would-be parents desperate to adopt children. As Helen puts it, the culture was
“to get the mothers out of the way as quickly as possible.”
Her son was given no information about his birth mother and father. When Helen requested his adoption file years later, she found a one-page document with many factual inaccuracies. The paper, for example, noted the occupation of the birth mother and father as “art students”, when they were not art students.
Since then, Helen has been reunited with the son she lost many years ago, but we must remember that this is not the end of the story. Television programmes can lead us to believe that a reunion is equivalent to the happy endings that exist in fairy tales. It is, of course, nothing of the sort, and it can bring up all sorts of new issues and challenges that must be dealt with by the families—both adopted and biological.
What happened to Helen and many, many other mothers like her is a national disgrace. It is not history. It is real life pain, grief and suffering that lives on today in the lives of those who have to carry those memories and those histories. I thank Helen for sharing her story with us, but it is time that we gave something back to her and all the other mothers in that situation. We must learn the lessons and understand properly the pain that still exists today. I am sure that this House would agree that Helen deserves an apology, at the very least. Now is surely the time for the Prime Minister to step up to the plate and give Helen and all the other mothers the apology that they deserve.
3.12 pm
Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)
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One can only imagine the stress and heartache that many women face when giving a child up for adoption. For virtually all women, there is an everlasting sense of loss that remains with them throughout their lives and guilt about giving up their child to an unknown future because they are unable to look after their baby. Thankfully, there are support agencies and charities that people can turn to for advice about parenting and adoption. We are also fortunate enough to live in a country where raising a child as a single parent is not taboo and is generally accepted by society. Unfortunately, this was not always the case.
In post-world war two society, there was a moral backlash against women who were pregnant, with some women being thrown out of their parents’ homes for bringing so-called shame and disgrace on them. Social workers and others in authority were not necessarily helpful in counteracting those attitudes, and adoption was pushed on young pregnant women as the only sensible option for them. Pregnant women were then sent to mother and baby homes run by religious or state organisations that made the pain and suffering worse. As my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) so eloquently described, this is where the suffering took place and where the forced adoption happened. They were not advised about things like the National Assistance Act 1948, which was introduced by the Government to help those who were destitute and thus could have helped them. Nor were they advised of any other benefits they could have sought to help them to find a way through the difficult situation they were in.
One such woman was my constituent, Jean Robertson-Molloy, who is present here today and was referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg). Jean reluctantly had to give up her baby in the 1950s, having been pressured to do so, and her daughter was sent to be adopted in New Zealand. Jean spent years of anguish and guilt wondering what had happened to her daughter and what sort of a person she was developing into. It is hard to know whether this is what inspired Jean to become a social worker, but she dedicated her life to helping others. She was eventually reunited with her daughter, so that story had a happy ending. However, the adoption seriously affected her life and that of her daughter, who felt the same as many children who have been adopted, wondering why they were given up for adoption and why they were rejected.
Jean, realising that her experience was not unique, decided to help found a group called the Movement for an Adoption Apology. This movement has been actively campaigning over the years. It is seeking an acknowledgement and an apology from the Government in recognition of the fact that the state turned a blind eye to the false adoption scandal, causing a great deal of distress and mental anguish to those affected. On 21 March 2013, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard gave a full apology, on behalf of the Australian Government, for false adoption. Leo Varadkar, the Taoiseach of Ireland has also given such an apology recently.
The Movement for an Adoption Apology is asking the Government to do the same. The harm done over the years by forced adoption cannot be undone by an apology, but an apology would go a long way to comforting those affected. Will the Minister therefore ask the Prime Minister please to make such an apology to the mothers and children affected by false adoption, to tell the full story of the false adoption practice that happened all those decades ago but is still very much an issue for those affected and to provide the support that is so desperately needed, still to this day, by everyone who has been affected by this scandal?
3.17 pm
John Mc Nally (Falkirk) (SNP)
The narrative we have heard today, particularly from the hon. Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern), has expressed all the concerns and high emotions involved in this awful, unjust practice. We have enormous sympathy for mothers who went through this. It is right that our social attitudes have moved on and we now have robust safeguards in place with regard to adoption. I thank the hon. Lady for securing this debate.
These mothers were, as we have heard, forced to make extremely upsetting choices simply because of the prevailing moral standard of the time. I know that Scottish Ministers have a great deal of sympathy for those women, whose accumulated experiences clearly show them to be the victims of the prevailing moral and social behaviour of the time. Nowadays, it is only right and just that we have more robust safeguards in place when mothers and other people consider adoption.