A Met review buys easy headlines for the prime minister, yet cuts mean other victims have no help
A century ago, when there was a tricky murder or kidnap to solve outside London, a request would be sent by the local police force to Scotland Yard asking them to send one of the "Big Five", a legendary quintet of detectives who were deemed to have the expertise to solve the most complex of crimes. Yesterday the prime minister placed the same burden of expectation on the Metropolitan police when he instructed them to review the abduction of Madeleine McCann in Portugal four years ago.
David Cameron was responding to an open letter written in the Sun by Kate McCann, the missing girl's mother, whose book on the case has just been published. It has been made clear that the money for any fresh investigation will come from the Home Office's budget rather than the Met's, but what can Scotland Yard achieve at this late stage? Cameron's reward for this intervention was the Sun headline: "PM: I've reopened Maddie McCann files".
How many families of missing children whose cases have never achieved a fraction of the prominence of the McCanns' story would have welcomed such a high-profile call to the police. And how ironic it is that the appeal to the PM and his response should appear in a newspaper belonging to News International, whose vast array of illegal hacking activities is currently tying up some of our most diligent detectives.
How ironic that the government can shove its hand into its pocket for a headline-grabbing investigation as it prepares to abolish the Forensic Science Service, which has done so much to track down criminals and which carried out important work on this very same McCann inquiry. How ironic that, just as the police are being told to cut their numbers, money can suddenly be found to reopen the most highly publicised disappearance in living memory.
The UK police service routinely assists in cases when asked for help by other services. Had Scotland Yard any information that might have led it towards the abductor of Madeleine McCann, it would surely have been passed to Interpol or the Portuguese police.
It is true that the latter carried out a highly unimpressive investigation, which they might blame in part on the obsessive interest by the British media in finding someone – anyone – who could be held responsible. But had there been real new evidence they would have been bound to pursue it.
The McCanns are right to seek every avenue to keep their daughter's case in the public eye. The story of Jaycee Lee Dugard, kidnapped from a bus stop in California at the age of 11 in 1991 and rescued 18 years later, is enough to make any relative of a missing child think there must always be hope.
But why the announcement now? If the kidnapper still has the child, one can be sure that the chances of them letting their guard slip will be lessened by the fact that a new inquiry is under way. Why didn't the home secretary just have a quiet word with the Met to see whether such a review had any real chance of success?
The Madeleine McCann story has been a grim one on many levels: apart from the tragedy at its heart there have been false accusations, snide rumours, attempts by others to profit from bogus child kidnap claims. What it has always needed was a calm appraisal of the evidence and the offer of resources. Instead we are presented with an announcement by the government that wins it a day or two's headlines but does little for the other victims of crime whose chances of justice have been diminished by reckless, ideologically driven cuts. For the McCanns to appeal for help is understandable. For Cameron to respond in this way is opportunistic hypocrisy.