The Justice Committee is calling on the law around "presumption of death" for missing persons to be changed to make it easier for families of missing people to handle their affairs.

Peter Lawrence, whose daughter Claudia has been missing for three years, told the Today programme's Evan Davis that "you find out very quickly within a few weeks you can't do anything" with missing family member's affairs.

The immediate practical difficulties in handling the affairs of a missing person hits you at your "lowest ebb", he said.

Rachel Elias, whose brother Richey - the guitarist with the band the Manic Street Preachers - disappeared in 1995, said that fears that changing the law would make it too easy for people to disappear is "no excuse not to bring it in for the rest of the families".

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