I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck) and the excellent maiden speeches we have heard today.
One key theme of the debate is adoption. I am pleased that we are giving airtime to the subject. I welcome the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael), who spoke passionately. It is an important issue for him to focus on as Chairman of the Education Committee.
First and foremost, I commend the Bill and the intention to reduce the time that children spend in care. I pay tribute to the excellent work of the Minister for Children and Families, whose extensive experience as a family law barrister and his personal experience make him so well suited to his brief. I pay tribute to his excellent work with children in care through the Who Cares Trust. He will know as well as anyone the tragic situations that are played out in the family courts every day. I know he is doing his utmost to improve the situation for children and families.
One increasing concern, particularly in my constituency, is the number of children who are taken into the care system every day. It has increased dramatically in recent years. It has become a pressing social issue that we cannot ignore. It has a huge cost to families in human misery, it has social and economic costs to society, and the cost to a child of a life in care.
More efficiency and speeding up adoption is a positive step forward, but it is not a solution in itself. We must look at how we tackle the problem of children entering the care system and think about different benchmarks of success. Increased numbers of children being adopted is not a measure of success, but fewer children entering the care system is.
Before the tragic case of baby Peter Connelly, adoption was always seen as a last resort. There are plenty of examples today when that is not the case. We see judges condemning the social engineering of social workers who judge, assess and find fault with parents. As the Secretary of State rightly said, the decision to remove is for the courts, but the courts can rely only on the evidence put before them. All too often, that evidence is the opinion of a number of professionals who are so anxious about the post-Baby P culture that they act pre-emptively through a fear of missing potential harm.
I believe that the solution must be to work more closely with families to help them stay together safely, and to ensure that we recognise that the best place, if at all possible, is the natural family. Many children experience terrible trauma when they are removed from their natural parents, with whom they have developed a strong and reciprocated bond.
In my experience of working with adoption panels and families who have lost their children to state care, it is wrong to assume that all parents whose children are taken into care are neglectful, dysfunctional or subhuman. Too many people make that assumption.