McCanns to lobby MEPs on child abduction protocols

THE parents of missing Madeleine McCann travelled to Brussels yesterday to lobby MEPs about the need for greater co-ordination between European countries when a child is abducted.

Kate McCann, 40, and her husband Gerry, 39, caught the Eurostar train from London. The couple, from Rothley, Leicestershire, are proposing the introduction of a new dedicated information hotline. They have already reserved the phone number – 116 000 – but it has yet to be introduced.

The pair recently visited the United States to see the "Amber" alert system, which allows police officers to commandeer the airwaves and TV channels if they believe a child to have been abducted.

Meanwhile, Portuguese detectives continued to sit in on interviews between British police and friends of the McCanns yesterday.