Express - Claudia Lawrence arrest proves that the hunt for missing Madeleine McCann should continue

Claudia Lawrence arrest proves that the hunt for missing Madeleine McCann should continue

AS A police boss says it’s time to shelve the inquiry, surely this week’s arrest over missing chef Claudia Lawrence proves there’s still hope of a breakthrough.

By ANNA PUKAS
PUBLISHED: 00:01, Wed, Mar 25, 2015

The numbers are undeniably compelling.

Four years; 31 officers of the Metropolitan Police; 33 trips to Portugal; £10million.

There, in cold, unemotional figures, is the cost of the British inquiry in terms of the time, manpower, travel and money which has been spent on investigating the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.

Expressed in this manner, it is not difficult to understand why some are saying that it is time to scale back the search for the little girl.

After all, it has produced no fruitful new leads or lines of inquiry.

At the same time, the Met is stretched as never before with quashing terrorist plots while also having to cope with ever diminishing finances.

A hard-nosed accountant or a time-and-motion inspector would no doubt use those numbers to swing the argument for calling a halt to Operation Grange, the name given by the Met to the inquiry into Maddie.

The trouble is that the unexplained disappearance of a child is never a cold, unemotional event.

The thought of a child in danger touches us in the most visceral way.

That is why many tens of thousands of people who have no connection to the McCanns became gripped by the tragedy of their predicament.

These people were not just from the McCanns’ home community in Leicestershire or even from this, their home country but people from all over the world.

Nearly eight years on, they remain engaged with the case.

That is why all parents – and even many who are not – will feel only dismay at the idea that it is time for the police to throw in the towel now.

What is even more distressing is the implied suggestion that a price can be put on a child’s life.

Some ask why it is the already over-burdened London force which is looking for Maddie when the McCanns are not residents of the capital.

But it is an irrelevant question.

As British citizens, Kate and Gerry McCann are entitled to all the help the British Government can provide.

In this instance, the Government, via the Home Office, simply decided to give them some of the best crime investigators that this country (some might say the world) can offer: a team from Scotland Yard.

Others take issue with the £10million cost so far of searching for Madeleine when the average police “spend” per missing child is between £1,300 and £2,400.

But that is because nine out of 10 cases are solved within 48 hours.

To continue looking for Maddie is to acknowledge that hope doesn’t die – and with good reason.

In this very week, police arrested a man in connection with the disappearance of chef Claudia Lawrence, who went missing from York six years ago.

As with the Maddie case, the place where Claudia was last seen has been searched time and again and still, it seems that it had not yet yielded up all its secrets.

Before Maddie, Britain’s best-known missing child was Ben Needham, who was a little blonde toddler when he vanished in 1991 while on holiday with his mother and grandparents on the Greek island of Kos.

While the search led by South Yorkshire Police (the Needhams are from Sheffield) has inevitably ebbed and flowed, it has never ground to a halt.

Further excavations on Kos were carried out as recently as 2012 and in January, Ben’s mother Kerry handed police a file listing eight separate sightings of Ben throughout the Nineties.

The Home Office has set aside a £700,000 fund to keep the search going.

Maddie is out there somewhere.

The only reason to cease looking for her is because her parents wish it and not because her fate has gone over budget.