The spokesman for Kate and Gerry McCann is set to address the Oxford Union about whether media coverage helped or hindered the search for their daughter Madeleine.

Clarence Mitchell will discuss the response to Madeleine's disappearance from her family's holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, southern Portugal, on May 3 2007 while her parents dined with friends nearby.

Despite a massive police operation and huge publicity worldwide, she has not been found.

Next week, Mr Mitchell will join Mr McCann to give evidence to MPs about how the media reported on the disappearance,

They have been invited to answer questions from the Culture, Media and Sport Committee on Tuesday. They will be joined by Mr McCann's lawyer Adam Tudor, a partner in libel firm Carter-Ruck.

Their evidence will form part of the committee's inquiry into press standards, privacy and libel.

The MPs are expected to ask Mr McCann, 40, why he and his wife Kate, 41, chose to sue a number of British newspapers for defamation instead of going through the regulatory body the Press Complaints Commission.

In March last year Express Newspapers agreed to pay the couple £550,000 in libel damages over false allegations that they were responsible for Madeleine's death.

Robert Murat, the first person to be named an "arguido" or formal suspect in Madeleine's disappearance, took part in a debate about the tabloid press at Cambridge University on Thursday night.

He said his life would be "scarred forever" by "tabloid lies" and argued in favour of the motion "This House Believes Tabloids Do More Harm Than Good" during a debate at the Cambridge Union Society.