Judge rules doctors can stop life support for brain damaged girl Pippa Knight

Doctors can stop providing life-support treatment to a brain damaged five-year-old, a judge has ruled.

A decision about Pippa Knight, from Kent, was made after a trial in the Family Division of the High Court in London.

Hospital bosses had asked Mr Justice Poole to rule that ending treatment, and allowing Pippa to die, would be lawful and in her best interests.

But her mother Paula Parfitt, 41, disagreed.

Ms Parfitt wanted Pippa, who was being treated at Evelina Children’s Hospital in London, to be placed on a portable ventilator and allowed home.

She told the judge that she believed in ‘God’s law’, which is to preserve life.

At an earlier hearing in December, she vowed to keep fighting for her daughter.

‘I just will not give up on her,’ she said.

‘If there is an opportunity for her to go home then it is what God would want.’

She argued that nobody knew what might happen and said there might be changes in medical science.

‘She needs to be given the opportunity because nobody knows,’ she said.

‘I don’t think you know if anything will work unless you try it.

‘I want my daughter to go home, have a tracheostomy and portable ventilation, and whatever will be, will be.’

The judge heard that Pippa’s father was dead.

After hearing all the evidence, he ruled on Friday that life-support treatment should end and Pippa should be allowed to die.

The barrister representing the NHS trust which runs the hospital described the case as tragic.

But Michael Mylonas QC said there was no hope that Pippa would improve.

More to follow