McCanns angry over press leaks

The McCanns believe the Portuguese authorities deliberately slipped transcripts of statements they gave to detectives in the hours after their daughter went missing on May 3 last year, to the media.

The excerpts include the disclosure that Madeleine and her brother Sean apparently woke up crying the night before the three-year-old's disappearance, but her parents did not hear her as they were in a nearby restaurant.

The interviews disclosed that Madeleine asked Kate at breakfast on May 3: "Mummy, why didn't you come when we were crying last night?"

The couple are demanding a full internal investigation from the Portuguese Ministry of Justice into whether the detail was deliberately passed to a Spanish journalist to "smear" them on the day they launched a campaign for a new child alert system in Brussels.

Their local MP Stephen Dorrell said he would raise the matter with the Foreign Office. It is understood the McCanns' Portuguese lawyers will be protesting to the relevant authorities there.

Their spokesman Clarence Mitchell called for the Portuguese government itself to "get a grip" of the leaks.

Although discussions about a possible return to Portugal to help police piece together the events of that night are still going on, the mood of co-operation has soured markedly since Thursday's developments.

"All this nonsense over the last 24 or 36 hours does not in any way endear them to the idea of going back," Mr Mitchell said.

Any leak of such sensitive material would constitute a clear breach of Portugal's unusual judicial secrecy laws. But the country's Justice Ministry declined to comment - citing the same judicial secrecy laws.