The sickening case of baby Iqra Bibi, battered to death by her brutal father in a fit of rage because she was crying, has quite rightly prompted a lot of soul-searching among the health and welfare services.

A little girl suffered greatly because of a failure of the system to keep an eye on her. There are lots of questions to be answered, not least of which is why neither a GP nor a health visitor had seen her since she was brought into this country from Pakistan by her mother even though the family was registered with a practice.

A spokesman for the police's child protection unit in Bradford has deplored the fact that nobody was aware of Iqra's existence and suggests that the immigration authorities could inform health authorities when a child enters the country - something a spokesman for the UK Immigration Service has ruled out.

It might be logistically difficult, yet surely it wouldn't be impossible in these computerised times for every child entering the country to be put on a database to which health and social services could refer, helping to close a loophole.

That, though, might not have helped in this case. It would be wrong to pre-empt the findings of the investigation which is currently under way but it is hard to avoid wondering how no-one could have been aware of the existence of a child who had been registered by her father at the local medical centre. Whatever procedures are in place clearly need to be reviewed to reduce the chances of further tragedies of this sort occurring.