An eight-year-old boy has been cleared of cancer, three years after his parents were jailed for abducting him from an NHS hospital to seek innovative brain tumour treatment abroad.

Ashya King was due to undergo chemotherapy and radiotherapy at Southampton General Hospital in August 2014, when his parents fled with him to Spain. They feared the treatment being prescribed by his doctors would leave him badly brain damaged and believed his best chance lay in innovative proton beam therapy being pioneered in Europe.

Brett and Naghemeh King were arrested in Malaga at the behest of the British authorities and jailed in Madrid for 72 hours on child cruelty charges.

But now, having received reassuring news from his son’s oncological team, Brett King said he was overcome with emotion.

At home in Southsea, Hampshire he told the Daily Mail: “'My wife said to me, ‘It's all OK now, there is no need to cry’, but there were so many emotions. Happiness, relief, I can't put it into words.”