JOURNALISTS covering Madeleine McCann’s disappearance in Portugal were under great pressure to bring in stories although it was “near impossible”, the Leveson Inquiry has heard.

Daily Express reporter David Pilditch said it was a “ludicrous state of affairs” because the police were not providing any information directly to the British press.

Madeleine went missing from her family’s holiday flat in Praia da Luz in the Algarve on May 3 2007, as her parents Liverpool-born Kate and Gerry dined with friends nearby.

Mr Pilditch was dispatched to Portugal to cover the story six times between 2007 and 2008, he described how he had to resort to gleaning information from Portuguese journalists who were speaking to the police. 

He admitted that although he was “confident of the veracity of the reports” he was writing, he did feel uncomfortable about the situation.

He said: “I knew that the reports were correct but I also knew that because there was no confirmation, there were going to be difficulties if any complaints were made because they weren’t publicly declared statements.”

Asked if he had hesitated at all before writing the stories that he did, Mr Pilditch said he had.

He added: “I feel uncomfortable writing stories where you’ve been put in a position where you can’t do it in the way that you’re used to, to be certain that what you’re saying is fair and accurate.”

He said there was “obviously a lot of pressure” to produce stories as newspapers and television networks from all over Europe were taking an interest and “you can’t not cover the story”.

As the law in Portugal prevents police from discussing details of their investigations with the media, “this was a ludicrous state of affairs which made covering the story near impossible”, Mr Pilditch wrote in his witness statement.

In March 2008 Express Newspapers paid £550,000 libel damages and printed front page apologies to Madeleine’s parents over a series of articles falsely alleging that they were responsible for their daughter’s death.

Robert Jay QC, counsel to the inquiry, asked Mr Pilditch if he shared his concerns about what he was writing with his news desk.

The witness replied: “I said ‘If we’re going to have any problems, we might not be able to defend these things because we just can’t get any information’. and that was the difficulty.”

Mr Pilditch went on to say that his bosses “took my comments onboard”.

But he added: “You’re in a situation where it’s a story of great interest and you’ve got newspapers and television from all around the world who are covering it and you know that your rivals are working on similar information and they’ve got similar issues.”

Mr Pilditch was questioned about the sources he used for stories he had written after the McCanns were made “arguidos”, or official suspects.

“It’s not something you can ignore,” he said. “It’s not something where you can just present a story that was based on a comment from the McCanns’ official spokesperson.”

Mr Pilditch was asked about his story which claimed a priest in Praia da Luz would not tell police about what Mrs McCann had said in a confessional. The article included a reference to the priest vowing “to take the secrets of the confessional to the grave”, Mr Jay said.

Lord Justice Leveson, chairman of the inquiry, commented: “All the stuff, for example, about what the priest might have been told, it’s all fluff. There’s nothing to it.”

Mr Pilditch replied: “It’s all the things that were happening at the time, but if you look at things now, knowing what we know in the public domain, it’s a very different picture.”