Kate and Gerry McCann pleased with new momentum behind case

• Kate and Gerry McCann “pleased” by new image released and hopeful of response

• Scotland Yard calls for case to be repopened after 195 potential leads emerge

• Detectives in Portugal are also understood to want case reopened but court approval must be granted

McCann family spokesman Clarence Mitchell told BBC Breakfast that as the five-year anniversary of her disappearance draws close, Mr and Mrs McCann are said to be “coping as best they can”.

Mr Mitchell said: “Kate and Gerry welcome this and they are hugely encouraged by what the police have been doing all of this last year since the launch of the investigative review.

“They (Scotland Yard) believe that it is quite possible that Madeleine could still be alive and that is what Kate and Gerry have said throughout the five years and they are hugely encouraged by all of this momentum in the case.”

He also said Mr and Mrs McCann want the case to be reopened but, added that such a decision is”up to the Portuguese authorities”.

Yesterday, the detective leading the Metropolitan Police review said the case could still be solved.

Detective Chief Inspector Andy Redwood said he believed her disappearance was a stranger abduction, as he said there were 195 “investigative opportunities”.

But police refused to say what evidence they had uncovered to suggest Madeleine was alive.

Mr Redwood confirmed that his team of more than 30 officers involved in the case had been to Portugal seven times, including a visit to the family’s holiday flat in Praia da Luz.

It will be five years next week since the three-year-old went missing as her parents dined with friends nearby.

The investigative review was launched last year after a meeting between former Met commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson and the Home Office.