Top Lawyer Comments on Today's Adoption Story

New figures reveal that 3,050 children were adopted in the year to March 2011, 5 per cent lower than the year before and now 20 per cent fewer than in 2005.

Only 60 babies under the age of 1 were adopted, down from 150 in 2007. Only 60 Asian and 80 black children were adopted last year, representing 4 per cent of the total.

Ayesha Vardag, leading family lawyer, commented: "It is a huge relief that the insanity and racism of race-based restrictions for adoption are coming to an end. There are decent people who want to love, care for and commit to making a family with a child. There are children drifting and denied familial love. Failing to match them up as an urgent priority, whatever their shapes, sizes, colours or shoe sizes, is an abominable dereliction of duty."

Ayesha Vardag graduated from Cambridge University with Honours in Law and from Brussels with a Master's in European Law, working at the International Courts of Justice in the Hague and the UN(IAEA) in Vienna. She then trained and qualified as a finance lawyer at Linklaters London and Moscow on power station and diamond mine projects, before moving on to capital markets work at New York law firm Weil Gotshal & Manges. Ayesha was called to the Bar in 1999 and joined 4 New Square chambers, then crossed to family law at Sears Tooth. She founded Ayesha Vardag Solicitors, now Vardags (http://www.vardags.com) in 2005.