A grandfather jailed for sexually abusing his granddaughter will not have his conviction quashed despite the 17-year-old now claiming that she invented the allegations.

The man, who is 68, must continue to serve his 12-year prison sentence even though the girl, who was the main witness in the case against him, has said that she lied at his trial.

Senior judges in the Court of Appeal heard how she invented the abuse as a way to gain attention from family members and friends but that after seeing her grandfather go to prison she realised she had to "do the right thing".

However the judges ruled that her original evidence at the trial in January last year at Snaresbrook crown court in London remained believable. In a ruling handed down on Friday the judges ruled that the girl, who was described as a "fragile and troubled teenager", seemed motivated by regret that her grandfather had been imprisoned.

The girl, known as M is proceedings as she cannot be named, first made the allegations about her relative to a counsellor in 2016, when she was 14. M told the counsellor that she realised that her grandfather’s behaviour was wrong only after attending sex education classes at school when she was in year eight. The counsellor reported the conversation to the police, who interviewed M the following day.