Tory peers lead fight to stop gay couples adopting

Allowing children to be adopted by gay, lesbian and unmarried couples would undermine marriage and deny them a stable home-life, Conservative peers said yesterday. They led calls for the Lords to defeat plans to allow unmarried and same-sex couples to adopt, in their debate at the report stage of the controversial Adoption and Children Bill.

Their view was opposed by Labour and Liberal Democrat peers, who said a loving home was better than a childhood spent in care.

A Conservative-led coalition of peers wants the Bill to restrict adoption to single people and married couples, after MPs agreed on a free vote to allow unmarried and same-sex couples to adopt. Earl Howe, the Conservative health spokes-man, said marriage was the best chance of stability for vulnerable children.

He said: "Above all, adopted children need stability and permanence. Statistics show clearly that couples who commit themselves to marriage stand the best chance of having a stable and enduring relationship. Unmarried couples and same-sex couples are much more likely to split up than couples who are married. I believe it would be irresponsible of Parliament to subject children to the risk of further disruption in their lives."

Baroness O'Cathain, who has taken up the late Baroness Young's post as co-ordinator of the campaign against gay adoption, said: "There is no need to extend the range of would-be adopters from married couples and single people. It is the children I'm concerned about. I am not concerned about political correctness or social engineering. These children do not have a voice. They cannot object to being a pawn in a political game."

Lord Jenkin of Roding, a Conservative former environment secretary, said: "I don't believe the solution lies in this all-or-nothing approach. To confine adoption only to married couples in today's changing society is too restrictive. But I also take the view that to extend adoption to same-sex couples would be a grave mistake. To make it lawful [to adopt] for heterosexual couples with long-term stable relationships, but who choose not to be married, would widen the circle of prospective adopters when agencies and local authorities find it difficult to find enough parents prepared to adopt."

The Bishop of Winchester, the Right Rev Michael Scott-Joynt, said the Bill would undermine marriage. He said: "Undermining marriage is like destroying a precious eco-system on which the security, maturity, well-being and wholesomeness not only of countless individuals but of our society now and in the future depends."

But Lord Alli, a gay Labour peer, said he would become an adoptive parent if the law was changed. "What I cannot agree with is that a child in institutional care is better off than in a loving, caring home," he said. "I would consider adoption with my long-term partner if we did it together. I couldn't, with the commitments of this House, give the time necessary to a child because it is not an accessory, as we have heard, and you have to find time."

Twenty Labour peers voted for the Tory amendment, with 48 independent peers and two bishops, the Bishop of Chelmsford, the Right Rev John Perry, and the Bishop of Winchester who wanted to restrict adoption to married couples.

Lord Hunt of King's Heath, a Health minister, said allowing gays and cohabiting couples to adopt would lead to many more children in local authority care finding loving homes. He said the move to allow unmarried couples to adopt had the backing of the overwhelming majority of adoption bodies and was not an exercise in political correctness.

The Campaigner: Baroness O'Cathain

Baroness O'Cathain's leadership of the fight against gay adoption started with a telephone call last month from Baroness Young on the eve of her death.

Lady Young, the staunch campaigner for Section 28 who had led peers against gay adoption, had been ill for some time with cancer. She asked her friend to chair a meeting of peers opposed to a change. Lady O'Cathain agreed. The next morning she received another call to say Lady Young was dead.

Lady O'Cathain, 66, a childless traditionalist, knew little of the detail of adoption policy but has "immersed" herself in the issue ever since. Detta O'Cathain ­ or Baroness O'Cathain of the Barbican in the City of London ­ gained notoriety when she stood down as managing director of the Barbican Centre after making clear she disliked women wearing trousers.

In a long business career, she rose to become managing director of the Milk Marketing Board in 1985.