Order the Met to look at Madeleine files, McCanns plead with Cameron

Published on Thursday 12 May 2011 18:28

David Cameron has been urged by the parents of Madeleine McCann to offer his Portuguese counterpart the services of British police to review the investigation into her disappearance.

Her father Gerry McCann, a Scot, said the expertise of British police in examining unsolved cases could uncover promising new lines of inquiry.

He called on the Prime Minister to speak to Portugal's caretaker premier Jose Socrates about the prospect of a detailed and independent cold-case review by London-based officers.

Mr McCann said: "The Metropolitan Police, for example, has lots of expertise. It's the largest force in the UK. That is what we want the British Prime Minister to offer his Portuguese counterpart. We don't know why this isn't happening."

He added: "What we can't survive on is rhetoric. What we need is action.

"He (Mr Cameron] has it in his power to speak directly to his opposite number in Portugal, and that's what we're asking for."

Portuguese detectives helped by officers from Leicestershire Police carried out a massive investigation into Madeleine's disappearance from her family's holiday flat in Praia da Luz in the Algarve in May 2007, days before her fourth birthday. But the official inquiry was formally shelved in July 2008 and since then no police force has been actively looking for the missing child.

Former Labour home secretary Alan Johnson commissioned a "scoping" exercise by the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (Ceop) centre in March 2010 to look at the feasibility of carrying out a case review.

But Mr McCann and his wife Kate, from Rothley, Leicestershire, still do not know the results of the exercise. Mrs McCann highlighted important gaps in the Portuguese police files, made public in August 2008, including the absence of interviews carried out by UK police of British holidaymakers staying at the Algarve resort at the time.

The couple have urged the public to get behind the search for their missing daughter as they did when she disappeared more than four years ago. They hope Mrs McCann's highly personal book about Madeleine's disappearance, which went on sale yesterday, will revive efforts to find her.

Mr McCann, 42, said: "We want people to read the book because it puts what's happened to us and what we are doing in context. But more than anything, we want the public to get behind the search for Madeleine like they did in 2007."

Madeleine went missing from her family's holiday apartment in Praia da Luz as her parents dined with friends nearby.

Private detectives employed by the McCanns have continued the search.Launching her book yesterday on her daughter's eighth birthday, Mrs McCann, 43, said people were "understandably shocked" the authorities had "essentially given up" on the child.

A spokeswoman for Mr Cameron said: "The Prime Minister met Kate and Gerry McCann while leader of the Opposition, and has followed their plight very closely. He and the Home Secretary want to make sure the government does all it can to help them."

Mrs McCann revealed that Easter Sunday this year marked the point when she and her husband had spent more time without Madeleine than with her.

Her book, titled Madeleine, racked up large advance sales and has been Amazon.co.uk's top-selling book for several days.

A spokeswoman for publisher Transworld said there had been a "huge amount of early interest".