[Relevant documents: First Report of the Petitions Committee, Impact of Covid-19 on new parents: one year on, HC 479, and the Government response, HC 1132; and the summary of public engagement by the Petitions Committee on support for new adoptive parents, reported to the House on 16 March 2022, HC 479]
That this House has considered e-petition 601323, relating to support for new adoptive parents.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ghani. The prayer of the petition states:
“Ensuring statutory adoption pay is available to a self-employed parent in the same way that maternity allowance is available for self-employed new mums would promote an equal and fair society inclusive of all routes to parenthood. A parent taking statutory leave regardless of it being adoption or maternity should be both recognised and supported fairly. Expecting self-employed parents to take unpaid adoption leave whilst supporting their child during a critical transitional period is unfair. This current policy is not inclusive of adoptive families and to many, reads as an act of discrimination. I wish the Government to introduce an Adoption Allowance comparable with the Maternity Allowance for the Self-Employed.”
I thank the petition creator, as well as the multiple campaigners, parents, charities and organisations—including many who are in the Public Gallery—who have come forward to share their experiences of the adoption process, for reaching out to me and all hon. Members present to help us prepare for today’s debate. I also put on the record my gratitude to the Petitions Committee Clerks and the team behind the scenes for conducting an online survey to ask the petitioners about their experiences of adopting a child. As expected with a topic of this importance, there was a lot of passionate feedback from petitioners, which has helped us to better understand the policy on adoption. I am grateful for their assistance.
The petition has amassed almost 15,000 signatures, including 37 from my constituency of Carshalton and Wallington. On behalf of the Petitions Committee, I should explain that although the petition has not reached the 100,000-signature threshold that would normally trigger a debate in this place, the Petitions Committee has discretion to schedule debates of this nature. This topic is a perfect example of where we might want to use that discretion, because it is an issue that not many people come across directly. It might be a bit niche for some, but it is something that is very important. We therefore felt that it was important to bring it here today.
The issue of financial support for self-employed adoptive parents was raised by the Petitions Committee in our October 2021 report, entitled “Impact of Covid-19 on new parents: one year on”. The report expressed disappointment that the Government had not acted to close the disparity in access to support between employed and self-employed adoptive parents when it was first raised during the pandemic by the Committee’s report on new parents in July 2020. Our report also highlighted an apparent lack of departmental ownership of the issue within Government, with confusion over whether it sits with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy or the Department for Work and Pensions. Ultimately, we concluded that the
Dr Dan Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making some very good points, pointing out the importance of the Government addressing this issue. Will he reflect on the fact that the Government have proactively encouraged people to be self-employed over the past 10 to 12 years, and ever-increasing numbers of people are self-employed or on flexible contracts that mean they would be considered self-employed? Does he agree that the encouragement the Government have given to self-employment makes it all the more important that this issue is looked at as a priority?
As ever, my hon. Friend is amazing in his psychic abilities, having seen ahead to where I will make that very point further on in my contributions. It is a very important point, and he makes it even more eloquently than I will.
In the Government’s response to our Committee’s report on this issue and to the petition, they restated that local authorities can already provide discretionary financial support to self-employed adoptive parents where affordability is a barrier to them taking time away from work. It is also noted that
“Prospective adopters…are also entitled to an assessment of their family’s needs”,
which could result in further offers of support including
“discretionary means-tested financial support, advice, information, counselling, and support services.”
In response to this petition, as well as a written parliamentary question tabled by the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell)—who is in her place—the Government also stated that support for employed parents have been prioritised, as they
“do not generally have the same level of flexibility and autonomy over how and when they work as self-employed parents do.”
However, there are a number of concerns about this approach that need to be better understood, and in my view, the approach should be rethought. First, while local authorities should consider making payments equivalent to the maternity allowance to self-employed adopters, there is no legal requirement for them to do so—it is merely guidance. This creates inconsistencies across the country, because a particular problem for prospective adopters is that many search for an adopted child through national agencies rather than local ones, and indeed many local authorities are combining their adoption pathways. I have also heard from multiple adoptive parents that the guidance is unclear and confusing, including unhelpful signposting on the gov.uk website. That is not a surprise, considering the issue of departmental responsibility that I touched on earlier.
Thank you, Ms Ghani, for calling me to speak. It is always a pleasure to see you in the Chair.
I thank the Petitions Committee for selecting this topic for debate, particularly given the number of signatures, because we know that everyone who has petitioned will either have personal experience or know of others with personal experience of what it is to be self-employed and to adopt, and the challenges that brings.
Before I home in on the petition itself, I want to pay tribute to the families who provide safe, loving, forever families for children. As chair of the all-party parliamentary group on adoption and permanence, it is a privilege to engage with the whole community involved in adoption, from young people themselves, birth parents and adoptive parents to those in health and social services, the professions working around the child and our secretariat, Adoption UK and Home for Good.
We strive to make the adoption journey one of the most supported and safe journeys around the child: one that puts a young person very much at the centre; one that ensures that funding and services are there; and one that looks at good family making and good family building, with secure foundations. We recognise that many challenges can arise. When we identify those barriers, we need services to respond and Government to use their agility to fix the challenges.
My hon. Friend is making a very important point about how we need to support adoptive families and children. I have been campaigning on the rather niche issue of regulating the sale of sperm online. Colleagues might be horrified to learn this is widespread in Facebook groups and on other social media. It is causing children to seek alternative means of finding out where they come from—via AncestryDNA, for example—which causes a lot of problems.
Does my hon. Friend agree that we need to look at all the services that support adopted children and their families in the long term, especially in the online and regulated space?
I thank my hon. Friend for raising that issue, on which she is probably more of an expert than I am. We have recognised the role of digital and the fact that many children in adoptive settings can be traced or can trace their birth parents without having support around them. We have to recognise the digital age in which children are growing up in order to keep them safe and to protect them. I am sure we will talk more about this subject.
The Minister for Children and Families, the hon. Member for Colchester (Will Quince), is committed to building stable families and providing the care and support that young people and their parents need. He has a sizeable task. Over 80,000 children are in care. I trust that, with the imminent publication of the review by Josh MacAlister, he will simultaneously fix the gaps in the adoption journey. We welcome the commitment of £144 million for the adoption support fund and £19.5 million for the implementation of the adoption strategy over the next three years. It is a sound investment, on which we will see a return.
We need a workforce plan to support children in the care system and their families. There is a deficit in timely support for families, and the scars of trauma emerge in various expressions. Three quarters of children experience abuse or neglect prior to adoption. They need support to be in place at the right time. In our APPG’s “Strengthening Families” report published last year, we identified the importance of aiding parents in the matching process. It has been more challenging through the pandemic, but we cannot let a recovery period delay the process of family building. We are particularly concerned about black and minoritised children in the care system, as well as older children and young people who have been in care the longest. As an APPG, we have more work to do, but so do the Government.
Self-employed parents need help, too. The crucial period of bonding as a family forms is vital in forming attachments and a new rhythm in a child’s life. The self-employed need the same opportunities as other parents to dedicate time to this. Denying statutory adoption pay is nonsensical. I trust that the Minister agrees. We await the legislative response to the Taylor review. I ask that the Minister ensures that the voice of adoptive parents is not lost in that process.
Dr Poulter
I am sure the Minister will find it difficult to disagree with the hon. Lady. She rightly mentions the barriers to adoption more generally. The coalition Government did a lot with my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Edward Timpson), in a previous guise, to reduce some of those barriers. He also highlighted the failure of previous Governments to have joined-up thinking, such as joining up the fiscal and financial incentives to support people in adoption. I hope the take-home message for the Minister is that it is time to do that. I hope he will commit to doing so at the Dispatch Box, and I hope the hon. Lady agrees.
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Normally it is the parent who does the joining up, and that is clearly not right. The Government need to make sure that the adoption strategy looks at every aspect of an adoptive parent’s journey and ensures that the facilities, support and services are in place to give the child the best possible start in life. It is exhausting for parents, who find themselves having to negotiate—this is where the law stands at the moment—with a local authority to see if they fit any of the criteria, on which there is no guidance. We know that cash-strapped local authorities may not be minded to pay specific attention to what is a very small cohort of parents.
The Government recognise how necessary statutory maternity entitlements are for parents to bond with their child, and they must recognise how much more important such support is for a child who has experienced multiple forms of trauma and who could have complex needs that need addressing. Life is often exhausting for an adoptive parent who is trying to form a new family and working to give their child the safest home possible. The services need to be there in a timely way to support and nurture that child, and to ensure they have the best start in life when perhaps their first start was not the right one.
The “Good Work” review does not accept that there should be a differentiation in the support received. On statutory adoption pay for the self-employed, we are not talking about a lot of people. It is not a high cost to the Government in the scale of things and, as well as the savings to the Government from ensuring that self-employed parents have the support around them, statutory adoption pay would be immeasurable for parents and for the child. Now is the time to act, and I trust that the Minister agrees.
That is kind, but I assumed that I would not be called. I am here just to listen.
6:24 pm
Holly Mumby-Croft (Scunthorpe) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ghani. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn) for opening the debate. He made a cracking speech, and I agree with pretty much everything he said. I join him in thanking the Petitions Committee for its work on this issue and, of course, I thank the families who have contributed to this discussion and the petition, as their work is incredibly important.
Adoption is very close to my heart and, like many people across this country, my own family understands it well. Whether or not adoption is part of our family, I think we all have an instinctive understanding of the value of adoption to our society. Before this debate, I was contacted on this incredibly important issue by many people in my Scunthorpe constituency—some who have adopted children, and some who have not. I thank all those who took the time to raise it with me and to share their experiences and views. I have constituents sitting in the Public Gallery today, and I thank them for taking the time.
I was surprised to learn that self-employed parents are not able to access statutory adoption pay. We all know, as do all the petitioners, that employed adoptive parents are able to access adoption leave. This is a fantastic system that provides the same access and rights as maternity leave and puts adoption on exactly the same footing as other ways of building a family. That is exactly as it should be, and it is right that the Government support parents who adopt.
The benefits of taking adoption leave are huge. It gives time for a new family to settle in and bond, as we have heard today. Especially for new-borns, the developmental benefits of the family being able to take that time off are invaluable.
I was shocked when I started to look into this issue after it was brought to my attention, because it seemed like the most obvious thing in the world. Why would self-employed people not be able to access statutory adoption pay? The benefits to new families that I have just described are reason enough to extend statutory adoption pay, as the petitioners have asked. I support them in their desire to see statutory adoption pay extended. Beyond that, we should be helping prospective parents to adopt. We should be making it as easy as possible for the right people to do so, regardless of their financial situation.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington mentioned, 1,870 children in England are waiting to meet their family, and more than half have been waiting for longer than 18 months. We have a shortage of adoptive parents. Not having access to statutory adoption pay is a potential barrier to self-employed future parents. Without it, people face a considerable time away from work. If they are the only person driving their business, this is a massive financial hit that not all families are able to absorb on their own. I worry that any self-employed person who wants to adopt may not be able to do so, simply because they cannot afford to take time away from work. If that applies to just one person, it is one too many.
I am delighted to be here and hon. Members will realise why shortly. I congratulate the hon. Member for Colchester on his speech, his presentation and the case he made. I hope we hear a similar speech from the Minister in a moment or two, and that the Minister accepts everything his hon. Friend said; I did not find anything that I disagreed with. I also agreed with the hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Holly Mumby-Croft).
As always, my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) made an impassioned case in support of adoption. She knows, even if others do not, why the issue means so much to me. I say to the hon. Member for Colchester that it is not just the Conservatives who think that we should support our self-employed people; that is what the Labour party thinks, too. I speak from personal experience, because I was self-employed and started and grew small businesses for many years.
20 of 50 shown
“benefits available to self-employed birth parents should be extended to self-employed adoptive parents”.
Before we delve into the detail, I want to set out the context in which we come here to hold today’s debate. There are around 1,870 children waiting to be adopted in England alone, and 52% of them—over half—have been waiting longer than 18 months. Our country currently faces a shortage of adoptive parents who have the right skills and background to meet the needs of the children waiting.
I welcome last year’s new national adoption strategy. As part of it, the Government’s vision was to ensure that:
“All adoptive children are found permanent loving families as quickly as possible where they will be safe and secure.”
The strategy stated:
“Prospective adopters from every walk of life are warmly welcomed and supported in a system that is never threatening or judgemental. Unnecessary barriers and bureaucracy placed in the way of those seeking to adopt are removed, systematically, across the country…Children and families get the support they need when they need it.”
In summary, our country faces an adoption problem, and the Government are taking steps to ensure that appropriate prospective adopters are supported to adopt a child in need, as per their strategy.
Women in employment having a baby are, of course, usually entitled to statutory maternity pay. For those not entitled—because they are self-employed, for example—there is the fall-back benefit of the maternity allowance. Employees who are adopting a child are also eligible for statutory adoption pay, which is modelled on statutory maternity pay. However, there is no equivalent for people who are adopting a child and do not meet the qualifying conditions—that is, those who are self-employed.
Secondly, linked to the first concern, inconsistencies in funding create uncertainty for families hoping to adopt. Conversations with social workers and agency staff are limited to ifs, buts and maybes, and financial planning therefore becomes difficult, if not impossible. There was agreement among the majority of respondents to the Petitions Committee’s survey that access to adoption support needs to be simplified, with multiple complaints about the role of local authorities. Of course, the very nature of the process of adoption is uncertain, but adding further stress and uncertainty to that process may not be the best policy to ensure stability for the newly adopted child and their new family.
Thirdly, the Government’s understanding of self-employment when it comes to adoption seems outdated and unrealistic in many cases. As part of my research for this debate, I heard from a prospective adopter who is self-employed. Unfortunately, like so many others, that individual is unable to hit the pause button on their work whenever they feel like it and press play again when they are free. The individual in question works full time, teaching in a school, and has the same amount of flexibility as an employed teacher. One of the key takeaways from the Petitions Committee’s survey on this issue was that adoptive parents feel they need more time to bond with and care for their child than the average birth parent. That is, of course, understandable, because adopted children have often suffered trauma from years of neglect and loss.
The survey found that just 61% of self-employed adopters were able to take time off work following adoption, compared with 78% of employed workers. Furthermore, 95% of self-employed adoptive parents agreed that more financial support would allow them to take the time off they needed to support their new child’s adjustment to their new family and new life. Contracts and work patterns have changed a lot in recent years, but adoption support has not reflected that. Self-employed adopters need support to take leave from work, so they can put time into ensuring their new child is safe and settled.
Fourthly, coming at this from a Conservative point of view, I feel the Government should be supporting and encouraging entrepreneurialism rather than repelling people from it. There are currently 4.8 million self-employed people in the UK, making up to 15% of the workforce. That is a 12% increase since 2001 and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter) said, we are doing much to encourage people to become self-employed.
The self-employed are our country’s business owners, job creators and wealth creators. They are the backbone of our economy, and we need them. We have debated support for the self-employed many times, and I led debates in this place on support for the self-employed and business owners during the covid-19 pandemic. Throughout the peak of the pandemic, like many Members of this House, I was contacted by dozens of constituents who were unable to receive substantial financial support, many of whom were self-employed.
Finally, the Government’s position on support for the self-employed is not consistent with the aims of the national adoption strategy. One responder to a Petitions Committee survey on this issue explained how they had changed jobs shortly before adopting and, as a result, could not adopt a child for the first six months that they were in their new post. Self-employed adopters are penalised and children are waiting longer in care.
I absolutely support the aims of the Government’s national adoption strategy, which states that prospective adopters from every walk of life should be supported, including the self-employed. The vision is to ensure that all adoptive children are found permanent, loving families as quickly as possible—unless, of course, their prospective parent is self-employed, or so it seems.
It is difficult to gauge the full extent of how many individuals, children and families are impacted by this disparity. Nevertheless, I hope this debate will highlight the need to address it and pave a path that will ultimately unlock future adopters and support the creation of safe, loving and happy families.
In my research for this debate, it sounded very much like this is a loophole that no one had noticed. I seriously hope the Government see things in the same way and will look to close this loophole as soon as possible. I draw my remarks to a close, as I know other Members are eager to contribute. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s comments and hope he is able to address the five concerns I have raised, as well as the many other concerns that will doubtless be raised by other Members.
The right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) made a powerful plea for other parental rights to emerge in such a Bill. I ask that adoptive parents do not suffer any detriment either. If we, as a society, value parenting and recognise its importance, there is no excuse for exclusion. I hope the Minister will forgive me, but I am impatient. Self-employed parents need support now. We know how hard self-employed people work to make their businesses a success.
We heard from the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn) about the challenges of the pandemic and how hard people worked to make their businesses thrive. They cannot juggle work around bonding with their child. Ensuring that the right attachments are made is a full-time task. That is why we need to ensure that the self-employed get the financial underpinning to not have to worry about paying their bills, not least at a time when the cost of living is such a challenge to all families.
Adoptive parents should not have to go cap in hand to their local authority either. Special guardians, kinship carers and adoptive parents need recognition that they, even more than birth parents, need to be 100% focused on family building. There is time for the Government to carry out a consultation on the Taylor review prior to their promised employment Bill. I ask the Minister to commit to that consultation today.
The 2013 statutory guidance on adoption states in paragraph 9.38 that
“The local authority should consider making a payment of financial support equivalent to the Maternity Allowance to adoptive parents who are ineligible to receive”
statutory adoption pay. Why is it that adoptive parents continually have to chase everything, and dedicate their time to feeding into the bureaucracy and trying to get it to work for them, as opposed to the Government addressing the issue?
Statutory pay will aid the recruitment of potential adopters and will assist in the success and stability of others. We know that 3,000 children are in need of a family. A full consultation was committed to by the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully), who has responsibility for parental pay and leave, during his evidence to the Petitions Committee in 2020, but we must include adoption pay, too. The Government have committed to improving adoption, so this is yet another opportunity for them to do so, and I hope the consultation will therefore be inclusive. He said,
“it is crucial to the success of an adoption placement that an adopter takes time off work to care for and bond with their child.”
That must apply to the self-employed as much as to the employed. There is no difference in the eyes of that child, or in that child’s needs.
I am not under the illusion that lifting this barrier will mean that every single child who needs a family will get one. However, making adoption a viable option for more self-employed people will help some of the children who are waiting to find their family, which should be our priority. This ultimately boils down to fairness; we should provide the exact same support to all adoptive parents, regardless of their employment status.
I know, from raising it with the Government, that this situation is not intentional. The system was not actively designed to favour one set of parents over another. It is an anomaly, and I welcome the commitment to review this situation. Similarly, I know that some local authorities, as we have heard, are able to make discretionary payments to support adoptive parents. We have a very good local authority in North Lincolnshire Council, but parents should be sure of getting the same support, regardless of whether they live in Scunthorpe or Southport.
I want to highlight an incredibly important issue that we must keep in mind, because many families are not publicly visible and are not able to fight on this issue. We understand the reasons for that difficulty, which makes it even more important that we do all we can to give a voice to those who, through no fault of their own, are not able to shout as loudly as they would like for their families. I spoke to a woman in my constituency just a couple of weeks ago—the mum to a gorgeous little boy—and she made that point to me. I am mindful of her words as I speak today.
Support that is provided to one parent must be made available to another; there should be no anomaly because of how the person became a parent. In the reply I received from the Government, I was told they are fully aware of the issue and are considering what options are available for equalising rights and entitlements given to adoptive parents, and I am very encouraged by that.
I hope the Minister will commit to looking again at this issue and to considering how we can extend statutory adoption pay to all eligible families who adopt a child, and show that the Government stand behind families and are committed to helping children who have sometimes had a very difficult start in life. I hope the Minister will strongly consider the requests in the petition, the strength of feeling on the subject and the support for it that I believe will be forthcoming in all our communities.