A debate on the practice of Forced Adoptions is to be held in the House of Commons, on Thursday, 12th July, 2018. The topic was chosen by the Backbench Business Committee.

The backbench MPs responsible for bringing forward the debate will also call on the government to issue an apology for the practice.

Whilst details of the debate seem to suggest that the discussion will focus only on non recent forced adoption practices – for example, women pressured into handing over their babies for adoption during the 1960s – the exact title of the motion leaves the door open for wider debate, which should and must include modern day practices around forced adoption.

The motion tabled by the cross-party backbench MPs calls for recognition of the “pain and suffering that the practice of forced adoption caused many women from the 1960s onwards”.

We therefore urge everyone with an interest in widening this debate to incorporate the current practices of forced adoption – which include the use of S.20 arrangements to illegally detain children in state care, with a view to putting them up for adoption or within foster placements – to contact the MPs involved and ask them to include modern day aspects of forced adoption as well.

We invite fathers who have lost children through forced adoption to reach out too.

The MP leading this debate is Alison McGovern, the Labour MP for Wirral South. You can contact her on Twitter at @Alison_McGovern, or email her at alison.mcgovern.mp@parliament.uk. 

The House of Commons library will be publishing a briefing and may also offer materials for the debate, nearer the time. Anyone interested in being notified when this information becomes available can do so by emailing papers@parliament.uk. You can also access a transcript of the debate, usually around 24 hours after it’s taken place, from the Hansard.