CASES in which children have been taken into care on the basis of disputed medical evidence are to be reviewed, following Salisbury mother Angela Cannings' acquittal last year.

Children's minister Margaret Hodge has written to local authorities asking them to reconsider cases where the outcome depended exclusively, or almost exclusively, on a serious disagreement between distinguished and reputable experts.

Mrs Hodge said she shared the deep concern expressed by MPs and the public following Mrs Cannings' case and recognised there might be other cases where parents had been wrongly separated from their children.

"In such cases, councils should again consider whether there are now doubts about the reliability of the expert evidence," she told the Commons.

"If that is so, they should then consider whether to apply to the court for the care order to be discharged or whether to support any application that may be made by the parents or the child."

In cases where children have already been adopted, Mrs Hodge said those adoptions would only be set aside "in the most exceptional circumstances".

"It would risk causing distress to adoptive families where children are happily settled. That would be quite wrong," she said.

Attorney general Lord Goldsmith has already announced a review of up to 258 convictions of parents for killing their children, in light of the Court of Appeal's decision to overturn Mrs Cannings' conviction.

She was wrongly convicted in April 2002 of smothering her two baby sons and served 20 months of a double life sentence before her release last December.