WE can always rely on this Government to make a bad situation worse. It is a talent for which New Labour is famed.

But when caught tinkering with the lives and futures of children to appease trendy, vocal minorities, Tony Blair and his ministers dice dangerously with the unforgivable.

Adoption laws in this country were never ideal. Successive governments have had a go at meddling with legislation until the tangled web of rules and regulations about who may, or may not, be acceptable as parents became impossible to negotiate.

New Labour's response to the need for simplification was typically predictable. When in a fix, go brazenly for the politically correct. Never mind the majority view of instinctive, natural parenting. They would rather trust the raising of vulnerable, needy children to homosexual couples.

Gay rights activists and fashionable North London wine bar sets might well want to congratulate Tony Blair on his latest move to turn the whole concept of family on its head. But most in this country will wonder how elected public servants managed to put such a huge distance between themselves and the people who pay them.

Yet again New Labour has cocked a snook at marriage and has had another shot a engineering its own version of the family.

The sickest part of it all is that they have used dependent, vulnerable youngsters as pawns in their game, when all those children wanted was a mum, a dad, a lot of love and a secure future.

JEAN ALLISON (Mrs)