HANSARD
Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme: Capital Disregard
- [Christine Jardine in the Chair]
- 2:30 pm
- I beg to move,That this House has considered the potential merits of introducing a capital disregard for payments made to UK residents under the Republic of Ireland’s Mother and Baby Institutions Payment Scheme.It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine, and to introduce this debate. I welcome the Minister and thank him for giving his time to this important matter. I thank Members from across the House who are present today and have been so supportive. Ahead of this debate, over 100 MPs and peers on a cross-party basis signed an open letter in support of Philomena’s law. That included nearly every mainstream party in Britain and Northern Ireland. In the Public Gallery, we are joined by Irish community organisations and survivors, as well as Philomena Lee’s family—her daughter Jane and grandson Joshua.I will begin by reminding Members what happened to Philomena Lee. Philomena was 18 years old when she became pregnant, and as a result was sent to Sean Ross Abbey mother and baby home in Roscrea, County Tipperary, in Ireland. There, Philomena gave birth to her son, Anthony. They lived there for three years before she was forced to give him up for adoption. Anthony was sold to a couple in the United States; Philomena would never see him again.Philomena’s story brought the scandal of Ireland’s mother and baby homes to a global audience through the Oscar-nominated film “Philomena”, where she is played by Dame Judi Dench. The film also stars Steve Coogan, who plays Martin Sixsmith, the BBC journalist who helped Philomena Lee in her heartbreaking search for her son. I am delighted that Philomena’s law has the support of Philomena Lee and her family, as well as the public backing of Steve Coogan. This campaign to change the law seeks justice for thousands of women like Philomena and their children, who were resident in Ireland’s mother and baby homes.
- I congratulate the hon. Member on securing this debate. I and many others have watched the film. Does he agree that although many of us are very critical of the media—I am among them—on this occasion, a matter was brought to wider attention that otherwise might not have been? We owe a debt of gratitude to all those who were involved in the broadcasting of such a film.
- I completely agree, and it shows the power of film and culture to tell such stories.Mother and baby homes were open in Ireland for more than seven decades until the 1990s. During that time, 56,000 so-called fallen women were sent to those cruel institutions, and 57,000 children were born or placed in them. The women’s only crime was the perceived sin of becoming pregnant outside of marriage. There they suffered the most horrific mistreatment and abuse. Women were used as unpaid labour. Others, like Philomena, had their children forcibly adopted, sometimes overseas, never to be seen again. Too many women died in these institutions, and infant mortality was shockingly high.Many survivors who escaped moved to Britain as a direct result of the mistreatment they experienced in mother and baby homes. In some cases, they came because they thought that disappearing from Ireland was the only way to protect their families’ reputations. Thousands came to this country for a fresh start and to build a new life, but they carried with them a great deal of internalised shame as well as the secret of what had happened to them. For lots of survivors, including Philomena, it was not until much later in life that they felt able to confront what had happened to them and share the details of those traumatic years with their families, often revealing long-lost relatives in the process.It was a significant day in 2021 when survivors finally received an apology from the then Taoiseach Micheál Martin for what he described as:“the profound, generational wrong visited upon Irish mothers and their children”.That was followed by the mother and baby institutions payment scheme to provide compensation for what happened to them. The scheme opened to applications in March 2021. It represents a measure of accountability for what happened and aims to acknowledge the suffering, and improve the circumstances, of former residents of mother and baby homes.
- I pay tribute to the fantastic work carried out by Irish Community Services in Bexleyheath in my constituency. It is supporting a number of survivors who are in those circumstances and would lose their means-tested benefit. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government need to look at disregarding the rules, so that survivors can keep both their compensation and any benefit that they are entitled to?
- My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The work of Irish Community Services in Bexleyheath is outstanding, and I will discuss some of the work of other community groups shortly. We absolutely need to see an indefinite disregard.
- I congratulate the hon. Member not only on securing this debate, but on leading the charge on this issue in the House and commanding such enormous and widespread cross-party support. Does he agree that justice delayed is justice denied? We all agree with what he is calling for, and we hope the Minister may agree with it later, too. However, it is not good enough just to agree. There is a real urgency about getting justice for those women who were affected, and for their descendants and families, to whom we all pay tribute.
- Absolutely. I thank the hon. Member for being the constituency MP of the real-life Philomena, whom I know she has been supporting. She is right that for many of these survivors, the clock is running.Broadly speaking, impacted survivors now find themselves in one of three situations. Some accepted compensation before realising the negative impact that it could have. Other survivors have received an offer of compensation, but they have delayed accepting it because of the uncertainty around how their benefits or social care might be impacted. Finally, there are survivors who are not making an application at all until the picture becomes clearer.
- I thank my hon. Friend for his tireless campaigning on this important issue alongside Irish community groups here in the UK. As he will know, thousands of survivors left Ireland for Britain, with huge numbers of them settling in the north-west. They were scarred by the physical and emotional abuse that they had faced, but they were also disturbed by the ease with which powerful institutions could abuse their power without question. Does he agree that more needs to be done to reassure survivors that those administering the scheme will be trauma-informed and act solely in the interests of survivors, and that those who apply for compensation will suffer no detriment to their current entitlements?
- Absolutely. I thank my hon. Friend for her campaigning on this issue. I know that she is a tireless advocate of the Irish community in Salford, of which she is part. She is absolutely right, and I discussed this issue with Patricia Carey, the survivors’ advocate, in Dublin over Easter.There are survivors who will not make an application at all until the picture becomes clearer, and that is contributing to the incredibly low take-up of the scheme by eligible survivors in Britain. At just 5%, the take-up rate here falls far behind that in Ireland. Unfortunately, the age profile of many eligible applicants means that delays in making applications or accepting offers risk people not living long enough to benefit from the compensation that they are due.Let me give just one recent example. A man who was born into a mother and baby home became so concerned about the impact that any compensation would have on his benefits that he held off making a decision for as long as possible. Sadly, after finally accepting the offer, he passed away within a matter of months, unable to benefit from the compensation that he was due. I think we can all agree that the situation is unjust.
- I thank my hon. Friend for giving way and for securing this debate. It is clear to me and to all of us who support his campaign that it is about justice. Does he agree that the low uptake of the scheme might also be down to a significant amount of internalised shame, as expressed by my own family members who have been affected by this? What he is doing today is putting a full stop to that shame and drawing a line to say that this will never happen again in any of our institutions, in Ireland or in the UK.
- Absolutely. I thank my hon. Friend, and I know that she has a strong personal connection to this issue. She is right to note that for decades women lived under a cloud of secrecy and shame. Having the conversation publicly in this campaign is partly to deliver justice and also to tackle the stigma of being in a mother and baby home.Philomena’s law seeks to right that wrong. It proposes the introduction of what is called a capital disregard, which would mean that any compensation from the scheme is ringfenced. It would enable survivors to apply for and accept the payments without fear that doing so would negatively affect their benefits. There is strong precedent for such a solution. The same mechanism has been used for many other special compensation schemes in the past, including supporting the victims of Windrush, those affected by the 7/7 and Manchester bombings, the blood contamination scandal and many more. One change in the law could have a significant impact on the lives of thousands of survivors, and that is what the campaign seeks to deliver.Before I conclude, I want to turn to the many Irish community and civic society organisations, some of which are represented here today. For many years, they have done vital work to support survivors across the country. I am delighted that we are joined by Rosa from Irish in Britain, Patrick from the Fréa Network, Séan and Katie from the London Irish Centre, Noelette from the Luton Irish Forum, Manisha and Simon from the Coventry Irish Society and so many more. From family tracing to support groups and counselling, to practical help with payment scheme applications, those groups are on the frontline, working around the clock to get the best possible outcomes for survivors.Ireland’s mother and baby homes were cruel institutions. More than 100,000 women and children were either placed in them or born there. Thousands of them suffered horrific mistreatment and abuse and were forced to live under a cloud of secrecy and shame. After decades of campaigning, survivors finally received an apology from the Irish Government and access to a redress scheme, but 13,000 survivors living in Britain today are at risk of not being able to access compensation without the fear of losing means-tested benefits.
- I remind Members that they should bob if they wish to be called in the debate. I should also mention there is likely to be a vote shortly, at which point we will suspend the sitting for 15 minutes to allow Members to vote.
- 2:43 pm
- It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham and Penge (Liam Conlon) for securing today’s debate and congratulate him on bringing forward a ten-minute rule Bill on Philomena’s law. I am proud to put my name to that Bill as a co-sponsor, particularly as I represent a significant Irish diaspora in my constituency, with close ties between the UK and Ireland. I hope the Minister understands the importance of those ties.As has already been outlined, Philomena’s law is named after Philomena Lee, who was 18 when she became pregnant and was sent to the Sean Ross Abbey mother and baby home in Roscrea, County Tipperary, where she gave birth to her son Anthony and lived for three years before being forced to give him up for adoption. We have heard about the Oscar-nominated film “Philomena”, which told the story of her painstaking search to be reunited with Anthony.Philomena’s story sadly struck a chord for thousands of mothers and their children who not only suffered in those cruel institutions, but were ever changed by the lasting mark it made on their lives. With great thanks to Luton Irish Forum, which does brilliant work supporting our Irish diaspora, I am honoured to share a snippet of the story of my constituent, Christina, who is here today. She has been really courageous in sharing her story and allowing me to mention her in my speech.Christina was born in a mother and baby home in Rathdrum, County Wicklow. Christina’s mother escaped and ran away with her just weeks after her birth, but subsequently left Christina on the doorstep of a church in Dublin. Christina spent much of her life being passed from foster family to foster family, where she experienced physical abuse, taunting and humiliation, including from those caring for her and neighbours on the street where she lived. She eventually reconnected with her mother during her teenage years, after hiring a detective to track her down, and realised that she was living in Dublin, just minutes from where Christina was working in a factory.
- I thank my hon. Friend for her eloquent articulation of Christina’s story. Does she agree that the capital disregard functionality could be extended to future compensation schemes? Instead of each campaign group going through the trauma of trying to get an exemption for people on means-tested benefits, it could be stipulated that, when a compensation scheme is deemed to come into law, the capital disregard is automatically part of it.
- I thank my hon. Friend for making a hugely pertinent point; I know the Minister will have heard it very well.Although compensation for survivors will not reverse the damage and trauma inflicted, the least we can do is to ensure that those who are eligible get the payments they deserve, that the process is as easy and stress-free as possible and that we provide them with the kindness and respect that they have too often been denied.