It seems a very high price to pay, but Mark now has the zeal of a convert and intends to take his case to Europe. ‘It is a serious debate,’ he says. ‘At what point is a father entitled to know, for sure, that a child is his? Some statistics say that as many as one in ten men may be unaware they are not the real fathers of their children.
‘DNA can be used by the Government to catch a criminal and put him in prison 20 years later, but it can’t be used retrospectively to make a father pay for his child.