Weekly News 53

Taxpayer fury as police handed extra funding to look for missing Madeleine McCann

This is the news story from the Daily Star written by Jerry Lawton, and follows the recents news that the McCann search fund has been given an additional £85,000 for a further 6 months of investigating the young girls disappearance a decade ago.

This has caused outrage amongst some people as this is taxpayers money and follows after the recent release of information that her parents have not worked since Madeleine went missing and were using the money from her fund to pay for their house and utility bills. 

The £85,000 was only granted on the basis that the police say they have found an individual that they want to question, however many took to twitter to question why a total of £13 million of the taxpayers money has been spent on a child, then only 3, left alone by her parents in a foreign country, especially when there are 213 other missing children's cases left unsolved. Why is this case special? Many question whether it is due to the high profile and class of the family. 

I completely understand that for parents, losing a child is a devastating tragedy and many would do whatever they could in order to find out what happened to their loved one, and with missing children the same funding cannot be given to each case due to differing circumstances. However I think equity should be considered in this case as there is such a massive incline in the spending in this particular child, who disappeared largely due to the negligence of her parents. After 10 years the likelihood of finding out what happened to Madeleine is slimmer and slimmer, and especially with the new budget and widespread cuts from the Tory government, that perhaps such a massive payout to an already expensive yet unfruitful case is not the fairest or wisest use of governmental funding.