Adoption of the children of unmarried mothers from the 1940s-1970s

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Last year, the UK Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights published a report about the adoption of children of unmarried women from 1940s-1970s. Podcast host Joanna Cherry speaks to two women directly affected about their experiences before catching up with Harriet Harman KC MP about the outcomes from the Joint Committee’s work.

Ann Keen was born in 1948 in North Wales. She became pregnant and was sent to a mother and baby home at the age of just 17, back in 1966. She went on to work in the NHS as a nurse, and later, she served as the Labour MP for Brentford and Isleworth from 1997 to 2010.

Liz Harvie was born in a maternity hospital in Northampton in 1974, her birth mother was unmarried. Liz was adopted at eight-weeks-old, and she lived with her adopted parents, and her brother, also adopted, who joined the family, two years later. 

We understand that the issues raised in the podcast may be sensitive or upsetting and the following organisations may be able to offer support or further information:  

Samaritans - Call 116 123 - 24 hours a day, every day | Email jo@samaritans.org

PAC-UK  - Independent Adoption Support Agency offering: Advice, Support, Counselling & Training. The advice line is available on 020 7284 5879 and 0113 230 2100.

Adoption UK Charity – For information on a range of adoption-related issues and campaigns for improvements to adoption policy and legislation. The helpline is available on 0300 666 0006.

Transcript

Joanna: Hello, and welcome to Committee Corridor. Today, we hear the stories of two women who suffered great pain and great loss as a result of decisions which were taken out of their hands.

From the 1940s to the 1970s, tens of thousands of children were adopted simply because their mothers weren't married, and even though their mothers did not want to let them go.

Today, we're going to talk about the right to family life, and one of the fundamental parts of family life is the right of a child to be with its mother, and the right of the mother to be with her child.

I'm Joanna Cherry, and I chair the Joint Committee on Human Rights. I represent Edinburgh South West in Westminster for the Scottish National Party.

Last year, my committee published a report about the adoption of children of unmarried women from 1949 to 1976. We heard from mothers, we heard from adopted children (now grown) and we heard from the Government. There were many others we didn't hear from and we remember them too.

Every story was different but there were similarities. For the mothers, the words that described their experience were words like fear, shame, stigma, distress, cruelty, and abuse.

For the children who were adopted, there were identities forever lost. Words like anger, regret, secret, unwanted, and above all, the question of why.

Later, we'll hear from Harriet Harman MP, who chaired this inquiry for the committee. We'll ask her how it unfolded and what's been happening since the committee's report was published.

But first of all, among the hundreds of voices that reached out to us, Ann Keen and Liz Harvie bravely came and spoke to members of our committee.

Ann was born in 1948 in North Wales. She became pregnant and was sent to a mother in baby home at the age of just 17, back in 1966. She went on to work in the NHS as a nurse, and later, she served as the Labour MP for Brentford and Isleworth from 1997 to 2010.

Liz was born in a maternity hospital in Northampton in 1974, her birth mother was unmarried. Liz was adopted at eight-weeks-old, and she lived with her adopted parents, and her brother, also adopted, who joined the family, two years later.

Ann and Liz, you're most welcome. It's not easy to talk about something so personal, so a big thank you both for joining us today to talk about this issue. Not everyone listening will have followed the inquiry, so I hope you don't mind if I start with some questions that will set the scene a bit.

Ann, can I ask you, what were your feelings on discovering you were pregnant? What was the reaction of people closest to you? Can you tell us a bit about your experience?

Ann: Well, my personal thoughts immediately was I was terrified. I was so anxious that this would have a disastrous effect on my parents and my family.

And I knew this, and I tried very hard almost to pretend it wasn't happening. But of course, the reality was I was pregnant, and I felt ashamed. I felt I'd let everybody down. And really, the only way I can say it, is I was terrified.

And there came a time when I had to tell my mom, and this was so awful. She cried, I cried. And when I say we feared telling my dad, it wasn't because he was an angry, horrible man. It was because it would have such a serious effect on him.

Because his education stopped at the age of 12, and he was so concerned that his children had the very best, even though he was a steel worker. He had a very manual job and with low pay, but he wanted better for us, which is fairly typical of parents everywhere. And I knew this would really affect him.

We thought about different things, is it true? Is it correct? And then my mom took me to my GP who I'd known from school days.

And so, this was even so much more embarrassing. He didn't express judgement, he just confirmed the pregnancy. And in those days, you didn't have an appointment. You just all went and sat in a waiting room.

And when I came out, I just felt everybody in that waiting room had heard what had happened to me. And I don't know whether they did or not, but my mum was crying, I was crying. And then we had to go and wait for a bus to go home.

It was awful because my mum was obviously devastated and very worried about what she was going to do. This was 1966, the famous year of England winning the World Cup. And the day that was chosen (don't ask me why) to tell my dad was the day of the World Cup.

And my mum's thoughts were that if England won, he would be in such a good mood. He wouldn't be thinking about anything else. Of course, we were waiting for this result.

We were in the back kitchen and we heard the cheer and that saying, "They think it's all over.” It is now. Well, it was for me because it was the worst thing that could have happened for my dad because he was elated, and he was a shift worker.

And then he heard the news and he was angry. Not in a physical way, but he was angry to towards me, that how could I do this? How could I bring this shame on the family? How could I have ruined my life?

It was again, it was fear all the time. We were afraid people would find out. Nobody was supposed to ever find out about this. And I was to be sent away — sent away just at the time when actually I needed to be with my family more than ever.

 

Joanna: It sounds like you were very much alone, Ann. Nowadays we would expect a young woman in the situation that you found yourself in to have access to different services to offer support and advice. But it was really very different in 1966, wasn't it?

Ann: Well, it was so different, we were told we wouldn't have any financial support by the sort of, I suppose, a social worker, you would refer to the lady today, but she was the moral welfare officer.

Now, that name in itself, again, it goes in very deep in and still with me. It goes in very deep that I was not a good person. I was a bad person because I'd brought all this onto the family and all this stress and concern, and most of all shame.

So, you start being coerced into believing that you cannot have this baby, keep this baby, and this baby will go to a home with a mother and a father. And this home will love your baby and care for your baby so much better than me because you won't have any money. Where will you live?

You know, you've said about how your parents are having such difficulty on — they would wait for the wage packet to come in every week.

So, I knew that an extra (as it was called then) mouth to feed and all these expressions are used. And it's also an expression that's used is often, “This is for the best, this is for the best for the baby, and in the end, the best for you, because you will have a life. You won't have to worry, you can go on and do things.”

But most importantly, and it was reinforced by this moral welfare officer when she sent me a photograph of my son at six-weeks-old, in the letter, which I gave to the inquiry. She writes, “You must be so pleased to see him look so well, and you'll now know that he will never grow up with the stigma of illegitimacy.”

So, really, it was about that. It was about being illegitimate. It was about special love, because if you say you love this baby, you let him go because you can't possibly love him.

And when that is said to you on a regular basis and you're told that you brought shame and everything, it's the behaviour. Well, I believed it because what was the alternative?

I didn't want to lose my baby. When he would move, I didn't feel alone because I didn't know it was him, but I had a baby and I wasn't alone.

I was only really, truly alone when he had been taken and he was taken. He was taken from the nursery on the eighth day when I begged and begged and begged, could I see him? Could I hold him? No, no, no.

And then, I saw this staff nurse and she had something about her face and her eyes, and I thought, I'll ask her. And she was brilliant. She said, “Yes, but Ann, please don't get close, don't get close. You can have him, but only for 10 days,” which was the time you stayed in hospital then, for 10 days.

And I went to the nursery on the eighth day and he wasn't there. And this cruel person in the guise of a nurse's uniform, said to me, “Oh no, he's gone. You'll never see him again. In fact, if you look through the window, he's in that building there and his new mommy is going to come for him and you can come with me now.” And she took me into this as it was then, and maybe some bathrooms in the NHS are still horrible.

But it was a cold, horrid bathroom. And she made me have a bath and then she got my breast and she expressed milk because she said, I will not need this milk.

So, again, I can say to you and anybody listening, that was the lowest I've ever felt in my life. And I knew I had no rights, no rights at all.

And I wanted to say this, my mom and dad never knew about that. They would never have wanted me treated like that. So, the fact you were sent away, it was for my benefit and the baby's benefit was the thinking at the time.

If they'd have known I was being treated in that way, they would've intervened. But again, I didn't feel I could tell anybody because nobody might believe me.

Joanna: Thank you, Ann. It's a really shocking story and to think that it happened in so many of our lifetimes.

And I want to bring in Liz at this point. Liz, you were one of the many babies who were adopted during this time. Can you tell us what your situation was?

Liz: Hi, Joanna. Yeah, I was one of 500,000 babies adopted during this time, and at least (and I think this is a conservative estimate personally) 185,000 of those adoptions are thought to have been forced.

My birth mother was 18, she was just 19 when she actually had me. She was in a relationship with my birth father but they just weren't married. I was born on the 11th of January 1974 in Northampton, England at a maternity hospital where we stayed for 10 days, which was the norm.

And then, I was sent to a local domestic foster home. And at eight-weeks-old, my adoptive parents first met me and then took me home the same day to Birmingham.

Joanna:            And you were able to trace your birth mother. Can you tell us about that? Was it straightforward or was it difficult?

Liz:                   When I was 16, after a great deal of pleading with my adoptive parents, I was always super curious as a child. I always wanted to know where I'd come from, who my parents were.

I had so many questions and they finally gave in and showed me the paperwork they had. And unusually, they actually had several documents relating to social worker involvement, both pre and post-adoption.

And they had the court adoption order paperwork from the Birmingham courts. It wasn't until I was 18 that I seriously started thinking about tracing my birth mother.

And when I was 21, finally plucked up the courage to write to the Church of England Children's Society to ask for their help and to help me gain access to my adoption files.

Four days later after I finally wrote the letter, I received a reply telling me that they did have records relating to my adoption. And in February, 1998, when I was 24, I received my first letter from my birth mother.

But saying that, for many adoptees, trying to get access to their records can be a highly complex and lengthy process for us.

Joanna:            Liz, did you actually go on to meet your mum?

Liz:                   I did, I was 29 when I finally met her and we arranged to meet in the middle of where we were both living at the time in a little village called Woodstock in a lovely pub garden.

And I was so nervous, so nervous. And when I finally saw her, even though I'd had photos of her, I just knew it was her. It was almost like every fibre of my body, every cell just recognised her. It wasn't just the visual recognition, it was my heart, my soul just knew it was her, it was such a special moment.

And there was no, oh, what do we do? We just hugged and had to be prized apart basically, we just clung onto each other. It was a very special day that I'd waited 29 years for.

Joanna:            Ann, can I ask you, you went on to work as a nurse yourself, and then you became a member of parliament. And people from the outside would applaud you for those achievements, but for you, now, how does it feel on the inside now, even in later life as you talk about this?

Ann:                 The honest answer is for a start, this inquiry, Harriet, and all of you in the committee has helped to make a difference to me. But it's still with me because — my son found me when he was 27 years of age.

He didn't know he was adopted. He'd never been told. And he has been so traumatised by all of this in so many ways. I wanted to introduce him to everybody, I wanted him to be part of the family, my nephew in particular, who I'd been godmother to.

And when I held him, I was actually holding my own baby. And all these sorts of things were going through my mind. He didn't want to hear that. He just wanted me and he didn't forgive me because there was nothing to forgive, he said. He was just angry with the system.

And who knows what our life would've been like but it would've had a lot of love. His parents had a divorce when he was three, and he'd spent his entire adult life trying to have a relationship with a man that didn't want to know him, but he thought was his father.

So, that was so damaging, so very damaging. And I think that really affects me today, the shame of whenever it — more likely to be written about maybe than maybe other people.

Certainly, when I was first elected, they wrote, “She gave him away,” and I didn't have any choices. I didn't, but technically, he was adopted.

Was he adopted with me screaming and was he taken away and me put in a straight jacket? No, but he was taken away. And that does live with me. The shame is easier because more people know.

And what's been so wonderful about the inquiry is people have been shocked — my experiences. So many of the mothers I now know have been so traumatised with mental health.So many of the mothers are in their late seventies, early eighties.

I want them alive to hear the apology. It's so, so important that we get recognised and we get the help and the children and families get the help.

Joanna:            Now, you've spoken there about the possibility of an apology, and I'm going to come back to that in a moment but you've also spoken very powerfully about the experience of your son. And I want to bring in Liz at this point.

Can you tell us, Liz, how what happened to you has influenced your life? Is it something that sits with you every day?

Liz:                   Being adopted has hugely impacted me and my life and I just want to get across to the listeners that adoption is not a one-time event.

Many people think it is something that happens when we are a baby that we have no recollection of — because babies are blank slates, that is absolutely not the case. Adoption has affected me lifelong.

When you grow up as an adoptee, you have no genetic mirror of who you are. So, we quite often create a false sense of self, who we think we should be. And also, if you think about it, we are literally living with a family of strangers who we feel obliged to be like in some way.

And always for adoptees, no matter what our situation or the family we were living with, that primal fear of being rejected all over again. Because I only found out that my adoption was forced when I met my birth mother. It certainly didn't say that in the records.

So, there's that worry about being separated again, always being complicit. I've grown up to be a chronic people pleaser, falling, trying to assimilate and be like every other person I met, it's exhausting sometimes.

There were common issues that we share in our adoptee community, loss and a lot of them are similar to what Ann was talking about. It's the same for the babies that then grow up as the mother’s loss, rejection, guilt, shame, grief, lack of identity, impaired sense of self-worth, struggles with trust and intimacy.

So, adoptees can feel any and all of these throughout their whole life. And while every adoption story is different, there can be no adoption without a loss.

Joanna:            And when you appeared in front of the committee, you had some key messages to deliver to the different agencies involved relating to things like access to records and medical history. Can you tell us about those?

Liz:                    

We had several recommendations, which I did speak about when I gave my oral evidence. But the three main ones were — which is so important.

The first one is access to records. The Government needs to provide quick and easy access to our full adoption files, allowing us access to our medical and family history and our identity information. We need free and easy access to proper support for any adoptee wishing to search for their birth families.

We need better regulated and free tracing and intermediary services that's currently prohibitively expensive for us. And also, all intercountry adoptees should be entitled to funding for travel to their country of birth and given additional tracing support because that is an added layer of difficulty for them.

The next one, which is so important to me, I'm particularly passionate about this as I'll explain in a minute, is access to our medical history.

Now, personally, after struggling with various seemingly unrelated medical things throughout my life, I discovered after having genetic testing, age 43, and I'm only 49 now: I discovered that I have a genetically inherited condition, Ehlers-Danlos syndrome.

Now, if my adopted parents had been given access to my birth family's medical history from the start, my condition would've been picked up earlier in my life. But instead, it was discovered too late for me to manage it well.

And remember, that this doesn't only affect adoptees. These problems are generational. Meaning that all of the issues I'm talking about affect our children as well. And sadly, I've actually passed on that inherited medical condition to my own daughters.

You would think surely, by default, we would have access to genetic screening and a multitude of tests as if conditions were pre existing in our family, such as breast cancer, Huntington's, glaucoma.

But sadly, I need to tell you, this is not the case. Doctors, GPs take this to mean that there is no risk and we are denied access to these tests. This concerns me greatly because it's actually negligent and does harm.

So, we are actually campaigning and making a big noise about that because that is actually medically harmful to us.

Joanna:            Now, the committee made some recommendations partly based on what you've just told us, but the joint committee also called on the British Government to issue a formal apology to unmarried mothers whose babies were adopted in the fifties, sixties, and seventies.

And I want to ask you both, starting with you, Liz, how important it is to you that such an apology is made and why it's important to you.

Liz:                   Well, I'm hoping that an apology will also be made and addressed to the hundreds of thousands of adoptees as well as birth mothers of course. But for all of us who've been affected, a formal apology is the very least that forced adoptees deserve from our Government.

We are tired of hearing that things have changed and society was to blame. The Government needs now to take responsibility for the lifelong pain and trauma that's already been caused to us. And that endures to this day, and at least with an apology that would cement the path for proper support services for adoptees.

And can I just say at this point what an apology would mean to me personally. As far as I'm concerned, it wasn't society that kept me in a hospital nursery as a newborn while the married mums had their babies by their bedside.

It wasn't society that caused me developmental trauma from being separated for hours on end from the only thing I knew as a helpless, terrified newborn. Society did not prevent my maternal grandparents from ever touching me. The maternity staff instead, holding me up like the Lion King behind the glass window of the nursery.

Society did not take me from my birth mother's arms on day 10, the last day she saw me and say, “You will never see this baby again.” So, social workers, maternity staff, healthcare workers, church adoption agencies were all accountable.

Joanna:            And that's why you see the state as responsible and why you think the apology should come from the Government?

Liz:                   Absolutely.

Joanna:            And what about you, Ann? How important is it to you that the Government should issue a formal apology?

Ann:                 Well, I'd start with saying I endorse everything Liz has just said, but also, I want to clear my name: “She gave him up. She did not want him.” All these things have been written about me. That's one aspect.

But also, only the Government can apologise for the mistakes of the past. Only a Government … in a way, I have some sort of not an issue with Liz, but society's attitude towards us was so bad of unmarried mothers and the churches and all of the people that are involved in this coercion.

So, in a way, only the Government of the day can apologise for those actions. The establishment was wrong to say we couldn't have any financial help because the welfare state was there. We’re never taken into account. But society did have an attitude.

And I can explain that with the two different midwives. One who made sure I expressed the milk in the most horrendous way from my breasts. And another one who I said was kind who said, “Okay, Ann, I've managed to do it.”

So, there was an attitude within that because nurses, midwives, doctors, social workers are taken from society, and they had an opinion that we were bad women. We were not worthy of anything. I wasn't worthy of any pain control in labour because I wouldn't do it again. That’s what I was told.

Joanna:            You had no pain control. You had no pain control during your labour, Ann?

Ann:                 No, and I was told I couldn't have it because I will remember the pain and I won't do this again. I had stitches and I wasn't given a local anaesthetic for that because I was told and I was moving, and the doctor slapped my leg, and told me to behave.

It's not about which Government or who, it's about the recognition that this was wrong. This was a historical injustice. And we didn't have the right to family life. I constantly had somebody missing in every photograph that was taken in my family.

Joanna:            Well, thank you Ann and Liz for such powerful testimony and for coming and talking to us about such deeply personal matters. Thank you both.

I'm delighted to be joined by the right honourable Harriet Harman KC, formerly Chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights.

Harriet, thank you for joining us. This inquiry was instigated by you, I believe, and you chaired it from beginning to end. Can you tell us why this inquiry was so important to you?

Harriet:            One of the mothers whose baby had been taken from her by way of adoption during this period contacted me. In fact, it was Ann Keen who'd been a member of parliament, had also had been a minister. And she contacted me and said, “Could the Human Rights Committee look into it?”

And we'd been looking into things about immigration, we'd been looking into situations of prisoners and all sorts of issues. And we originally thought perhaps this isn't something we should be looking at. Perhaps the Health Select Committee should be looking at it. Did it really fit within our remit?

So, we said, probably, not us. And then a few months later, she got in touch again via another member of Parliament Ali McGovern. And we sat down in Ali's room and they said, “Well, if not you, who is going to do this?”

And the right of a mother to have her child with her and the right of a child to be with their mother, you can hardly think of a more basic and fundamental human right.

So, although it did seem a bit out of the mainstream of our normal work, once we'd recognised that it was a fundamental human rights issue, the right to family life, we picked it up and really felt very strongly committed to it.

Joanna:            And I mean, is it unusual for a committee to look back to look into the past at a problem like this rather than looking at the current work of the Government?

Harriet:            Well, you’re right. Most committees are involved with the very immediate: what legislation is the Government bringing forward, is it gonna work or is it gonna do something that Government doesn't intend or people don't want?

Or what is the benefits agency doing? Or what's happening in the depth of the visa assessments in the home office. And it's very much a current thing, but actually, select committees do have this ability to look back at something that might have gone wrong in the past. And it might seem that there isn't any Government business about this, but actually, something really needs to be looked at.

One example was, I don’t know whether you remember those — well, you will remember those postmasters and post mistresses who the post office introduced a new computer system called the Horizon Computer System and had it that they were all fiddling and many of them were sent to prison or became bankrupt.

And that was a kind of past terrible wrong. And then the select committee looked into it and it triggered really the exposure of the whole thing being a great injustice. So, select committees do have a bit of autonomy.

They can look back and say, “This did happen a long time ago, but there's people around who are still suffering or there's lessons that still need to be learned.” So, select committees do have that ability and that's what we did in this case.

Joanna:            You mentioned there people suffering and obviously, the subject matter of this inquiry was incredibly personal and sensitive. Can you tell us how you went about gathering the evidence?

Harriet:            Well, it was paradoxical because on the one hand, the mothers who'd had their babies taken from them and their adopted children, it was a deeply personal and often, a quite private traumatic episode for them. But on the other hand, they wanted their voices heard.

So, we had to strike that balance between ensuring that we let them speak and not assuming they didn't want to keep it all secret, but also, where they did want aspects of privacy not invading their privacy.

And for many of them, for both the mothers and indeed, their adopted children, they'd never spoken about it before. So, you can think that there was children who were 40-years-old and this had never been discussed.

And it was such a web of secrecy. There were many adoptive mothers who hadn't told their subsequent children and had to keep that as a secret bearing down on them.

So, I think that uncovering things that are secret because of guilt and stigma is really important, but you're trespassing right into the heart of somebody's family life and you have to do it very carefully.

And me and the other committee members and the clerk’s team were very mindful of keeping that balance the whole time, not patronising people by saying, ‘You want to keep this secret, you'll want to be anonymous,” but also not exposing them to a glare of publicity, which would've made things worse for them.

Joanna:            And I think I'll let our listeners into the secret that I was serving under you on the committee at the time, and was part of some of the evidence gathering and we held round tables. Can you tell people what that involved?

Harriet:            Well, normally, what select committees do is that the clerks who are extremely expert look into all the research that there is and all what's written down on it. And then you take oral evidence from people who've got a direct connection with it.

But we wanted to go a bit wider than that because there was literally hundreds of thousands of women and their children involved here. And we thought that if we just had a panel of two mothers and two children, it wouldn't do justice to the, to the scale of the issue and the different voices involved.

So, we held in the House of Commons a round table event where we, as members of the committee, as MPs sat at different tables and each table had a group of mothers whose children had been taken from them during this time.

And we also had a table of children, young people — people who'd been adopted during this time. So, it just gave us a wider sense. And I also think it enabled them to feel that they'd spoken and had their say.

I mean, I think having your say for the sake of it might be good, but what's much better is have your say and something changes as a result. But there is really an important thing for people to be able to speak directly to the members of the select committee so they know we really have understood as best we possibly can without having ourselves been in that situation, understood their situation.

And we've done that previously with like young people detained in mental institutions and things like that. I think you have to talk to people themselves about their human rights in order to get your head around it.

Joanna:            You talk there about the importance of people having their say and also seeing a result, because they've had their say. Can you summarise for us what the findings of the committee were and what recommendations you made?

Harriet:            Well, the findings of the committee was that this was a violation of the right to family life. It was a human rights abuse that had gone on in plain sight. And there was a terrible shame and stigma put on these mothers for having got pregnant when they weren't married.

And then when society's attitude changed, they were against stigmatised for having, “Well, why did you give up your children? Why did you abandon your child?” So, they suffered from two different sorts of stigma over the decade. And of course, they'd lost the right to bring up their child as the mother.

So, it was a fundamental abuse of their rights and that they were entitled to an apology, not only for having their child taken away without their consent, but also, being shamed and stigmatised at the same time.

And we also had some practical proposals as well. So, we've asked for a Government apology and we're still waiting to hear back from the Government on that. Some other Governments, notably Australia, have apologised. And I think that's been incredibly important. So, I hope this Government will do the same.

We made a number of practical suggestions. For example, birth and adoption certificates contain different names. One of the things that happened when a child is adopted, their name is changed. And so, with no connection being made between the adoption certificate and the birth certificate, we think that should be changed.

We recognise so much now with genetics that a parent's medical history is really important for their child and putting in place practical measures to enable young people who are adopted to have access to their parents' medical histories if that's accepted by them.

We discovered for example, that there's a problem with foreign travel and visas because one person who contacted us needed to visit their mother in Australia who was very elderly. So, time was not on their side to visit the mother, but because they were not regarded as a relative, although it was their birth mother, they weren't able to go.

So, the certification really of that relationship needs to be modernised. And also, there's very variable experience of people's ability to trace their adopted children or indeed adopted children to trace their birth mothers. So, that needs to be improved.

And also, one of the most painful things for mothers was to not know whether their child was still alive so that they'd think when the COVID hit, “Did my child survive the COVID epidemic?” Or if they hear of a great pile up on the M1, “Could it have been my child that was in that pile up?”

And whether or not arrangements could be made with the mother asking to be notified if the child who's not been in contact with her dies so that at least they know whether they're alive or dead. It's that fundamental.

So, we made a number of practical suggestions, but I think that if the Government apologises, then it really sets right society's attitude on all this, which is not that these young women had done wrong, actually, wrong was done to them and to their children.

Joanna:            And just to be clear, Harriet, many people will have read about this phenomenon, and perhaps have laid the blame for it at the door of religious institutions or church institutions.

But the committee concluded that the apology should come from the Government. Can you just explain why the committee concluded that the apology should come from the Government?

Harriet:            Because ultimately, Government is in charge of all of these processes, either by what they do or by what they fail to do. So, they're responsible for adoption legislation or the lack of it.

So, where there was a situation where adoption was completely done informally by the local church, taking away the mother going to a church-run, mother and baby home, and then the church arranging for another member of the church somewhere else to take over this baby.

I mean, if the Government didn't step in to regulate that and stop it happening, then that is the Government's responsibility. And of course, the Government did step in later on and these things can't happen anymore.

So, I think the clue is that actually, it could never happen now because of what the Government has done, and therefore, the fact that the Government hadn't done it then shows that it's the Government's responsibility.

Of course, there were lots of others involved and the Catholic church, for example, has given an apology. I would hope that the Church of England would give an apology too. But I think the Government is overall responsible for the system.

I mean, we recognize that the loss of a child is one of the worst things that can happen to somebody. And it's quite strange that in this case, because there was a great weight of moral disapproval of a girl having sex outside of marriage and getting pregnant, somehow, the recognition of the dreadful scale of this loss was simply wiped out.

Joanna:            I believe the Government haven't responded formally to the committee as yet either, and the committee have had to give them a nudge.

Harriet:            I still hope the Government will give an apology. I think that the fact that it could never happen now, and we would be horrified if it happened now, tells you why it's so important that the Government should give an apology. We need to set the record straight.

These were not women who'd done wrong. They were women under who wrong had been done. And the Government is no doubt being advised that it'll give an obligation to provide compensation or it might give an obligation to provide extra services to these women.

But I think really, the Government need to step back and say, “Was this a terrible wrong that was done? We are in the Government now, we can do a bit of good by actually officially saying that this was absolutely wrong. It will never happen again. It should never have happened, and we apologise.”

And with that, recognise the horrific pain and lifelong trauma suffered by the birth mothers, and indeed, the problems and traumas for the children who were taken from them.

Joanna:            My thanks to all my guests today. If you're interested in reading the reports we've been discussing, you can find out all the details of the inquiry on our webpages. Search for UK Parliament plus Joint Committee on Human Rights.

The inquiry is called The Right to Family Life, Adoption of Children of Unmarried Women 1949-1976. You’ll also be able to see all the work that the committee is currently doing.

If you have any feedback on this episode, we’d like to hear it. Subscribe to Committee Corridor, and leave us a review.

I’m Joanna Cherry, MP, and this has been Committee Corridor. Until next time, thank you for listening.

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