THE Bishop of Blackburn today spoke of his sorrow over the internet baby row and said: "It isn't like buying a car."

The Right Rev Alan Chesters spoke to the Lancashire Evening Telegraph as baby-buying couple Alan and Judith Kilshaw prepared to go to court to win back the six month old twins they bought from a woman in Arkansas, after they made contact through the internet.

The couple, from North Wales, were due to travel to the Priory Court in Birmingham today to fight wardship proceedings launched by Flintshire County Council for baby twins Kimberly and Belinda, after leaving a hotel in Lytham St Annes, where they had spent the weekend hiding.

Speaking from the House of Lords, Bishop Chesters condemned the couple's decision to buy the youngsters via the internet.

He said: "It can't be right for babies to be traded as things to be bought and sold. It can't be right for youngsters to be transported from one country to another in this way.

"The incident raises a whole range of questions about adoption procedures which, I am pleased to see, the Government is reviewing and I support that. Of course, the people who will suffer the most are the children involved, if not now, then in the future.

"As things stand, those with money are going to be able to buy a child like a motor car. That cannot be right."

He added: The bible teaches us to respect the dignity of life, which is so very precious. People who sell children on the internet do not know the motivation of the people who are buying them."

Mr and Mrs Kilshaw spent the weekend holed up at the Clifton Arms Hotel, in Lytham St Annes, with their two children, James, seven, and Rupert, four.

Mrs Kilshaw insisted: "We are ordinary people who have been plunged into this. We have had no peace or dignity. We have nothing left. We are just an ordinary family who have been turned into the most hated people in Britain."

Commenting on the couple's £8,000 'purchase,' Home Secretary and Blackburn MP Jack Straw said: "It is a matter of huge concern. It is completely illegal in this country for people to buy and sell children. That is entirely how it should be, because, frankly, it is a revolting idea."

The children's natural mother, Californian Tranda Wecker now wants her twins back, as do an American couple, Richard and Vickie Allen, who claim to have been first in line for the twins.

The couple claim the twins were snatched from their home by Tranda and taken to Arkansas, which has much more relaxed laws about adoption, to sell them to the Kilshaws for a higher price.