McCanns accept £550,000 damages

They were not present at London's High Court for the settlement of their action against Express Newspapers when a judge heard of the "untold distress" they had suffered as the result of publication of more than 100 defamatory articles.

In a statement read out on their behalf after a hearing before Mr Justice Eady, the couple, whose four-year-old daughter went missing from the family's holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, Portugal, on May 3 last year while her parents dined at a nearby tapas bar with friends, described the allegations against them as "grotesque".

They said: "As part of our settlement, Express Newspapers have also agreed to pay damages, by way of a donation of £550,000 to the fund that was established to help find Madeleine. We feel it is entirely appropriate that the search for Madeleine will now benefit directly out of the wrongs committed against us as her parents. We hope that the Portuguese authorities lift our arguido status in the very near future so that everyone can focus on finding our beautiful little girl, Madeleine."

The couple said: "Express Newspapers rightly acknowledge that we are innocent of all allegations that we may have been involved in Madeleine's abduction and we would like to reiterate that there is absolutely no evidence that Madeleine is dead or has been seriously harmed. We embarked on this course of action reluctantly, indeed with a heavy heart, as we did not wish the pursuit of it to become a distraction from our sole aim - finding Madeleine."

Earlier, the couple's solicitor-advocate, Adam Tudor, told the judge that from the late summer of last year until February this year, the Daily Express, the Sunday Express, the Daily Star and the Daily Star Sunday, which have a combined circulation of several million copies as well as a substantial online readership, published more than 100 articles which were seriously defamatory of the couple.

He said: "The general theme of the articles was to suggest that Mr and Mrs McCann were responsible for the death of Madeleine or that there were strong or reasonable grounds for so suspecting and that they had then disposed of her body; and that they had then conspired to cover up their actions, including by creating 'diversions' to divert the police's attention away from evidence which would expose their guilt.

"Many of these articles were published on the front pages of the newspapers and on their websites, accompanied by sensational headlines.

"In addition to the allegations referred to above, the Daily Star published further articles (under the headlines 'Maddie mum sold her' and 'Maddie sold by hard-up McCanns') which sought to allege that Mr and Mrs McCann had sold their daughter in order to ease their financial burdens. A further article alleged that Mr and Mrs McCann were involved in 'swinging' or wife-swapping orgies."

Mr Tudor said that, as Express Newspapers now acknowledged, all of these allegations "were, and remain, entirely untrue".