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'We can't reunite thousands of mothers with children wrongly taken from them'
Thousands of parents who had children taken away from them on the evidence of the controversial paediatrician Professor Sir Roy Meadow will not have them returned.

Ministers are to review as many as 5,000 civil cases of families affected over the past 15 years by Prof Meadow's now-discredited theory of Munchausen Syndrome By Proxy. This accused mothers of harming their children to draw attention to themselves.

Many mothers say that they have been vindicated in their insistence that they were wrongly accused and now want their children back. However, Margaret Hodge, the minister for children, has ruled out any widespread return.

In an interview with The Telegraph, Mrs Hodge said that it would be wrong to raise the hopes of the families torn apart by the doctor's theory. It was called into question following three major miscarriages of criminal justice and is being investigated by the General Medical Council.

Mrs Hodge said that the exact number of civil cases where Prof Meadow's theory had been used to remove children from mothers was unknown, but could run into "thousands or even tens of thousands".

She added, however: "If a miscarriage of justice was made 10 or 15 years ago, what is in the child's interest now? If the adoption order was made on the back of Meadow's evidence and that was 10 years ago, what is in the real interest of the child? If they were taken as babies the only parent they know is the adopted one. It is incredibly difficult. It is a really tough call to make.

"The sort of families that are coming forward are heartbroken families. But if the child was adopted at birth the sensible thing to do is to let it stay. As children's minister my prime interest has to be the interests of the child."...

...Prof Meadow's theory was discredited following the cases of three mothers who were wrongly accused of killing their children on his evidence. Sally Clark was cleared on appeal, Trupti Patel was acquitted and Angela Cannings, who was jailed in 2002 for murdering her two baby sons, had the conviction quashed last December. On that occasion, three High Court judges said some of the professor's evidence was "simply wrong".

The Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, is examining a further 250 criminal trials involving Munchausen's Syndrome By Proxy, to see whether more mothers imprisoned for murdering their babies might be innocent.

Mrs Hodge is likely to ask local authorities to search through their records to find all family law cases involving Meadow. Some campaigners estimate that 5,000 children were taken into care because of Prof Meadow.

In these civil cases, children were taken from their mothers on a balance of probability that they were harming them or might harm them in the future. In criminal cases, harm has to be proved beyond reasonable doubt.

Another option being considered by Mrs Hodge is to appoint a judge to trawl through the records of each authority to identify possible miscarriages of justice, but this would prove costly....