TWO drug addicts, whose children were taken into local authority care, suffered a setback in their bid to see them, at London's Court of Appeal yesterday.

In July, at Middlesbrough County Court, Middlesbrough Council was given permission to ban the parents from seeing their children once they have been adopted.

Yesterday, lawyers for the pair told London's Court of Appeal that the order was "draconian" and wasn't in the best interests of either the children or the couple.

In a bizarre twist, Lady Justice Hale, sitting with Lord Justice Carnwath, were also informed the father only discovered days before the county court hearing that he had no biological link to the children. He had brought them up thinking he was their father, but DNA tests proved otherwise.

Barristers Tom Finch, for the father, and Helen Gamble, for the mother, said a judge at Middlesbrough County Court had acted prematurely in giving the council the go-ahead to cut off all contact.

They said both parents were trying to turn their lives around, and Miss Gamble said that the father had been reliable in the past when it came to visiting.

But Lady Justice Hale said that, although she felt great sympathy for the parents, who had admitted their children needed adopting, there was nothing wrong with Judge John Walford's decision.

She said although the council had the power to stop all contact, it was also within their discretion to allow the parents to continue seeing the children. The judge told the court the children, a girl and two boys, all under ten, had had an appalling upbringing and an "awful start to life".

At the county court a doctor had said it would not take much for the children to suffer a relapse, and recommended little or no contact between them and their parents.