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Child Migration

My Lords, on behalf of these Benches I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, for repeating the Statement. I am very glad to be able to respond to it on behalf of these Benches and I say that for one reason. Quite by chance one night I happened to flick on to a television programme about Margaret Humphreys and the establishment of the Child Migrants Trust. I commend that programme to Members of the House. It was one of the most searing television programmes that I have ever seen and it sparked my continuing interest in this issue. As the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, said, governments atone for things that have occurred well in the past and they do their best to make amends. I welcome very much the establishment of the family restoration fund. That will enable many people to visit their existing families and, in some cases, it will enable them to visit grave sites. The damage that we are talking about is that searing. I vividly remember listening to a gentleman in the programme who had done very well for himself and his new life in Australia and had made a lot of money. With that money he bought all the Beatles memorabilia that he could find because the only thing that he knew about himself was that he came from Liverpool. That goes right to the heart of this question. The single most important thing to these people who are now adults is to know their identity. There is one particular thing that this Government could do to enable them to achieve that. That is to change the law on access to care records for former care adults. It applies to adults who were in care as children in this country too and is a matter that I have raised with successive ministers in this House. If the Government feel that they cannot do that, will they ensure that every social services department in the land has a copy of Access to Information for Post-Care Adults: A Guide for Social Workers and Access to Records Officers, which has been produced by a lady called Julia Feast, an expert in this field, who works for BAAF. It enables social care workers today to understand the good practice that they should follow in enabling people to deal with the hurt of not knowing their identity and having their identities concealed from them for so long as they have been in the past. Were the Government to take that step it would be as profound in its effect as the establishment of the fund and would make this sincere commitment to make things better in the future all the more worth while.