There are plenty of conservative criteria to judge applicants on which never get included. Do they "recognise" the importance of communal meal times? Of diction? Of posture? Of saying "please" and "thank you"? Of saying prayers before bedtime? Of nursery rhymes and bedtime stories and visits to the countryside? Of making sure the child gets into a good school? Such matters are rather more pertinent to successful child-rearing than a lot of the sociological guff that the social workers are told to use. But each child is different and so ultimately all these formulas break down because they have to be adjusted to individual circumstances. My concern is to remove barriers to adoption-not to replace left-wing ones with right-wing ones.

As of 1 April last year there were 81,620 "looked-after children" in the UK. These are children being raised by the state, either placed with foster carers or in children's homes. Each "looked-after" child will have its own heartrending story of how it got to that status. Many, probably most, of those 81,620 could and should be adopted.

There is no independent body to offer a check on the established orthodoxy. The British Association for Adoption and Fostering is heavily dependent on funding from the state and offers no challenge to officialdom. Its guidelines include a tendentious list of "myths" and "facts". The following is described in bold type as a "myth": "Children need a mother and a father in order to have proper male and female role models." In response comes the "fact": "Children get their role models from many people besides their parents."