Sometimes members of the public wander into the Packet office with stories so unbelievable that there is a tendency to write them off as nutters.

It nearly happened last week when a man - who cannot be named for legal reasons - claimed that Cornwall's social services department had stolen his grandchildren.

But this man didn't look or sound like a nutter. He came across as an ordinary, everyday bloke who was desperately trying to put right a grave injustice.

He told a reporter that social workers had taken his grandchildren away from him and were putting them up for adoption. The grandparents were looking after the children because their daughter was suffering from post natal depression.

Why would social workers want to take children away from loving grandparents and place them with total strangers? The answer, according to the grandfather, was to meet government targets on adoption.

This, of course, has been denied by the government and Cornwall's social services department. But why else would they take children away from a loving home? It just doesn't make sense.

The grandparents are relatively young and active, own a nice comfortable home in Falmouth and are certainly passionate about caring for their grandchildren, who they will probably never see again if a long running legal case does not end in their favour. The grandfather has even risked arrest by protesting outside County Hall in Truro.

Could it be that social workers really are using any excuse to seize children in order to meet adoption targets? Despite the denials, there are some very responsible people who are taking such claims seriously. An Early Day Motion in the House of Commons, supported by 12 MPs from all political parties, warns of "increasing numbers of babies being taken into care, not for the safety of the infant, but because they are easy to get adopted."

In 2000, claim the MPs, ministers set a target of a 50% increase in the number of children in local authority care being adopted by March 2006. According to the latest available figures, the number of "looked after" children being adopted has gone up from 2,700 in 2000 to 3,700 in 2004, an increase of 37.7% Liberal Democrat MP John Hemming, who tabled the motion, says the figures would be "laudable" if it meant children were being rescued from a life in care. But he says he has evidence - which cannot be published for legal reasons - that children are being separated from parents without proper grounds. Mr Hemming said: "1,000 kids a year are being taken off their birth parents just to satisfy targets. It is a national scandal."

It is, indeed, a scandal. And the fact that it could be happening here in Cornwall fills me with horror.

*****

In these days of the nanny state, I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised about children being taken away from parents for the most spurious of reasons.

Social workers in the north of England are even threatening to take an eight-year-old boy into care because his parents feed him too well. The boy weighs 14-stone and has been placed on the local child protection register alongside victims of physical and sexual abuse.

Obesity is, of course, a growing problem. According to the Local Government Association, crematoriums are even facing difficulties because fat "clients" are proving too big for the furnace doors.

But it seems a bit rich to me that politicians - many of whom resemble tubs of lard themselves - should be preaching to us about the need to lose weight.

What a pity Candy Atherton is no longer MP for Falmouth and Camborne. I'm sure she would have something to say about this!