Ben Needham’s mother Kerry is begging the Government to provide the same money to police hunting for her missing son as has been given to the search for Madeleine McCann

Kerry Needham wants the same money to be spent on looking for her son as has been given for the search for Madeleine McCann(Image: MDM)

The mum of missing Ben Needham is begging the Government to give the same money to police hunting her son as that being spent searching for Madeleine McCann.

This week the Home Office awarded the Met Police an extra £192,000 to probe Madeleine’s disappearance. It takes to £13.2million the total spent since she vanished in 2007. Kerry Needham said that in almost double that time – 32 years – South Yorkshire Police has had less than £2 million to help find what became of Ben.

She added: “I am glad for Madeleine’s parents because I know the horror they’re going through.” But she said the extra cash for the Met felt like “a kick in the stomach” for her and other families of missing children.

 Ben vanished on the Greek island of Kos(Image: PA)

Kerry, 51, went on: “No missing child should be more important than another.” Ben, 21-months, vanished on the Greek island of Kos after the family moved overseas from Sheffield. Madeleine, three, disappeared from a holiday villa in Portugal 18 years later.

Kerry said the new senior officer on Ben’s case had told her he would like to return to Kos to continue the probe. She added: “Why aren’t the Home Office throwing money at him and saying ‘Off you go and see what you have to do’. Where’s the extra funds for our police to do whatever they want to do?”

She would like a witness who claimed there was a digger accident involving Ben to be quizzed. And she wants witnesses who made “inconsistent statements” to be revisited. The man previously in charge of the case, Det Insp Jon Cousins, said he believed there was a digger accident.

In 2016 team from the UK excavated behind the farmhouse where the digger was working and where Ben was last seen. They found a bloodstained toy but the DNA didn’t match that of the child. The digger driver died in 2015, prompting a witness to come forward claiming he’d made a deathbed confession that he’d run over Ben and then hid his body. His family strongly deny this.