WE welcome all the inquiries and hurried legislation that our politicians are beginning in the wake of stories about how easy it is to adopt a child over the Internet.

Our front page this morning tells how it took only minutes for our reporters to arrange in principle the adoption of two-year-old Timur from Kazakhstan. Within three months he could be ours - for a "service fee" of about £13,000.

True, it might be difficult for us to get Timur into the UK, but the agency seemed confident that it could overcome all barriers on our behalf. And getting Timur into the UK would probably be of little concern to paedophiles like those in the Wonderland Club. This was the ring that was broken by police earlier this month. Its members had 750,000 pornographic images of children on their computers. People like them would not want to adopt the Timurs of this world - just photograph them and then abandon them.

Yet the British Government will find itself in great difficulties as it comes to legislate on this sick trade. For a start, the Internet is ungovernable. We in this country have little control over what our search engines pick up. No matter what rules the Government in London sets up, they cannot apply to the rest of the world wide web.

However, the Government can tighten up our adoption laws to prevent cases like that of the Welsh couple who bought their children in America and, because of our adoption agreement with the US, were easily able to whisk them into this country without our authorities having any say in their suitability as parents. We hope Alan Milburn, as he begins his inquiries this morning, will consider this with all speed.

The saddest part of this episode, though, is not the prospect of children falling into the hands of dubious parents or, worse of all, paedophiles. It is not the apparent willingness of a number of companies to make money out of the trading of human flesh and bones.

It is the fact that out there in the world are thousands of unloved and unwanted babies, children whose parents are prepared to sell them for the price of a mid-range car. What possible hope of a decent life can these poor, miserable souls have? It is truly heart-breaking to contemplate.

Despite our enormous technological advances, like the Internet, ours is not always a pleasant world