Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill

Debate between Lisa Nandy and Matthew Offord

2nd reading
Monday 3rd July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Lisa Nandy]

I am grateful to the hon. and learned Lady for raising those concerns. We are keen that all the voices in this debate ought to be heard; I have heard different views from across the Jewish community, but I have to say to her that the overwhelming view I have heard is that there is a desperate need to tackle this very real problem. The strength of feeling in the Jewish community that we must legislate to tackle this problem is overwhelming. I do not want for one moment to deny that that is what I have heard in my frequent conversations with the Jewish community, but as I will outline, there are serious problems with the Bill that need to be addressed.

[Dr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con)]

I am grateful for the hon. Lady for giving way, and for the tone she has struck. As someone who has a significant proportion of Jewish constituents, I speak in defence of them. The BDS movement and its increased presence on university campuses has seen the Community Security Trust state that there has been a 22% increase in campus antisemitism. We are now in a situation where many of my constituents will not go to university because they face such hostility, so the enthusiasm for the Bill may not be about its drafting, but about the aims that it seeks to achieve.

[Lisa Nandy]

That is absolutely right. In fact, the Union of Jewish Students, which has expressed real concerns about the Bill—the very students who have often been the targets of the appalling abuse and attacks that the hon. Gentleman has outlined—is clear that it wants to see this problem tackled. I hope that is a basis on which we can proceed across the House in a debate that, as I have said, needs far more light and far less heat. I remain confident that, with good faith and good will on everyone’s part, we can find a way to tackle what is a very real problem for the Jewish community in this country.

I will take a moment to explain why the Bill does not do what the Government intend it to do. Clause 1 attempts to ban public bodies from taking decisions influenced by

“political or moral disapproval of foreign state conduct.”

We have commissioned legal advice that suggests there are two readings of the clause. I would just say to some Conservative Members that a King’s counsel—a distinguished King’s counsel who happens to disagree about the legal impact of this legislation—deserves a hearing and deserves respect. If in a democracy those who disagree with us are accused of acting dishonestly or in bad faith, we are in a very dark place indeed. That legal advice suggests that on first reading the clause applies only when it relates to specific territories. That would create the absurd situation where public bodies could refuse goods from China because of general disregard for human rights, but could not refuse cotton goods from Xinjiang because of concerns about genocide against the Uyghur population.

The second reading of the clause, which I imagine is what the Government intend, is that public bodies are banned from having any regard at all to human rights violations of foreign Governments unless they are expressly permitted by this Government. There are a few exceptions in the schedule referred to in clause 3—labour rights, bribery and the environment—but not genocide, as my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) has said, or systematic torture or grave breaches of the Geneva convention. After the horrors of the second world war, it was British diplomats who held the pen, crafting the international legal system that recognised that some crimes are so grave that they should never be acceptable. What has changed that gives the Government grounds to create two tiers through this Bill—to deem slavery unacceptable, but remain silent on the issue of genocide? Have we given up believing that these things matter?

Adoption

Debate between Lisa Nandy and Matthew Offord

Thursday 5th July 2012 Westminster Hall

[Lisa Nandy]

The hon. Lady is right to highlight that. National adoption week plays an incredibly important role in raising awareness of adoption and flagging it up to potential families as something that they may not have considered before but may consider in the future. Of course, what happens to those potential parents next is also incredibly important, as I know she recognises.

[Dr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con)]

Although I take the point about adoption week, I would like to make the point that, as councillors are corporate parents of looked-after children, they have a specific responsibility, and their role is crucial in ensuring that adoptions happen quicker. I would like to see all local authorities and all councillors ensuring that every week is an adoption week.

[Lisa Nandy]

I welcome that intervention and would be interested to hear the Minister’s response to it. Like many other hon. Members here, I was a local authority councillor before I came to this place, and it caused me great concern that the extremely heavy duty placed on councillors as, in effect, the parents of children in the looked-after system is not well understood by the majority of councillors. We need urgent action to tackle that.

In the 2006 Children’s Rights Director’s report on children’s views of adoption, children said that the best thing about being adopted was joining a new family; the worst was leaving their old one. One child described adoption as

“a scary, sad and happy experience”.

That sums up better than I could, especially as I did not go through this process as a child, how confusing and difficult an experience adoption can be, even when it brings great excitement and joy.

I think that everyone now recognises that there is a pressing need for ongoing support—practical, emotional and sometimes financial—for adoptive parents. My hon. Friend the Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz) and the hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) talked about that very eloquently. I look forward to the Minister’s response on the issue. That support, not just for adoptive parents but for children, is essential to prevent adoption placement breakdown. Before the debate, Barnardo’s made the point that the support should be able to continue beyond three years, particularly where children are teenagers and going through many of the difficulties that the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich described. I am talking about children coming to terms with what has happened to them, sometimes long after the event, and deciding how they feel about it.

Children speak powerfully about the trauma of placements failing. Some children told the Children’s Rights Director that they felt that they were responsible for trying to make their adoptive placements work out. One child said:

“I felt that if anything went wrong it would be my fault”.

Sometimes we seriously underestimate the amount of responsibility that children take for the decisions that are made that affect them, so ongoing support could not be more important. I look forward to seeing more details of the adoption passport when they are announced. Perhaps the Minister can tell us whether that will be part of the announcements tomorrow. In the meantime, I agree with the Local Government Association that funding is an issue. It says that local authorities face cuts of up to 28% in social services budgets. If the adoption passport is not fully funded, it will remove funding from elsewhere in children’s services, which children can ill afford, especially given that the social worker is the critical person in the process.

It should be of deep concern to us all that when children are asked what the worst thing about being adopted is, many still say that it is their social worker. In all my recent meetings with children who have been through the care system, they have talked about social work turnover. It is often not a criticism of the individual, but a criticism of the amount of time that a social worker is able to give them, or of the fact that they have had two, three or four social workers in as many months. With budgets under pressure and higher case loads, that could be a real problem.

As we heard from many Members, children need time, information and a sense of control. They often need to be given information over and over again, because, as anyone who has ever worked with children knows, sometimes they are just not capable of taking it in, particularly information of this kind. Time is therefore precious, which brings me back to getting it right for children.

We need to consider adoption as part of the wider system. We know that adoptions are not always the right solution for children. There is no hierarchy of placement where children are concerned. I want to quote something from the Children’s Rights Director’s report, because it is so powerful:

“children have strongly told us that fostering is one thing, being adopted is quite another, your plans should be for which of these is best for you as an individual, and adoption shouldn’t be put forward for anyone just because councils want to get as many children adopted as possible.”

That is set against the backdrop of issues in fostering, including allowances and supply. According to the Fostering Network, a foster placement is needed every 22 minutes. Due to the shortage of foster families, almost two thirds of local authorities have had to split up siblings who are in care over the past year. Allowances to foster carers are not keeping pace with inflation, and, in some instances, are falling below the national minimum recommended by the Government. The Fostering Network says that the situation is particularly bad in Scotland, where the Government have set no minimum rate.

There is concern outside this place that progress on adoption is detracting from the pressure points elsewhere in the system. I am sure that the Minister agrees that there is no reason why that should be the case. We can, and should, look at the system as a whole. When will the Government publish the eagerly awaited plans, expected this summer, to improve the system for all looked-after children?

Finally, it is a glowing tribute to professionals and adoptive families that, when asked, so many children say that there is no worst thing about being adopted. One child said that knowing that they could stay for ever if they wanted to was the best thing about it. That so many front-line professionals are clearly getting it right should be a source of real encouragement to all of us, as we seek, collectively, to do better.