When a six-year-old girl went missing, Sussex Police tried to re-activate a lost-child text message alert scheme they had cancelled just days earlier, MPs heard.

The drama surrounding the disappearance of little Summer Haipule was revealed for the first time by East Worthing and Shoreham MP Tim Loughton.

He scathingly attacked police handling of the child alert pilot scheme.

He said in response to the death of schoolgirl Sarah Payne, East Grinstead firm Community Alerts had set up a database of at least 6,000 people who could be alerted by text.

But the police had suddenly terminated the firm's contract in June, so no messages could be sent after Summer vanished from her home in Bolney Road, Moulsecoomb, Brighton, on July 7.

Mr Loughton said officers made desperate attempts to contact Community Alerts, which had not been paid for the contract.

He added: "Sussex police called Community Alerts in the middle of the night when the suspected abduction took place to try to get the system reactivated."

Summer, who it was feared had been abducted, was eventually found safe and well 14 hours later, asleep in a neighbours' house.

The Tory MP said: "The neighbours were oblivious to the missing child, having not heard the television and radio broadcasts, although they did have mobile phones."

In a debate on the pilot scheme, Mr Loughton attacked the way Community Alerts had been treated by the police.

He said the police had damaged the firm's reputation by simply stating the text message service had not worked.

Mr Loughton said: "Community Alerts is a small company that developed a service, in good faith, with Sussex Police.

"It provided the service free of charge, allowed the police to take the credit for the service and then saw its reputation tarnished by the people it had tried to work with.

"Community Alerts has lost contracts in other areas of messaging because of the erroneous bad publicity."

Home Office minister Hazel Blears has agreed to meet Mr Loughton to discuss the experiences of the firm.

But junior minister Fiona McTaggart said the Association of Police Officers was now in charge of developing a national scheme.

A spokesman for Sussex Police said: "The rest of the Child Rescue Alert scheme worked according to plan and the text messaging was only one small part of it.

"The fundamental element - getting broadcast media to interrupt television and radio programmes with news flashes that a child was missing - was a success and within a short amount of time literally thousands of people across Sussex were aware that a child's life was potentially at risk.

"Community Alerts has never been publicly criticised by Sussex Police and offers of payment to the company for the work it undertook during the pilot phase have been made."