Gove knows the importance of adoption

The coalition’s work on adoption is one of its more impressive bits of public service reform. It starts from the right premise, that adoption is vastly preferable to children being in care. It then uses changes to the regulations, transparency and a plethora of providers to try and increase the number of adoptions.

It is, for example, absurd that the current system has left to children being left in care because of worries that their ethnicity does not match that of their potential adopters. Or, that people are being denied the chance to adopt because they smoke.

These reforms are being pushed hard by both Number 10 and the Department for Education. Michael Gove, the education secretary, was himself adopted. In an interview with ITV last night, he spoke about how being adopted had changed his life.