IF YOU’VE ever wondered just what a dog’s breakfast looks like then the saga of little Ashya King is it.

Alleged abduction, arrests, judges, warrants, Interpol, then it turned out – as most normal people suspected – all his mum and dad were guilty of was trying to do the best for their baby.

Now this is apparent, the chorus of not-me-guvism is deafening.

But that doesn’t make what happened any less sinister. At first this sounded like the usual Jehovah’s Witness story – brainwashed parents refusing to let their kid have lifesaving medical treatment yadda yadda. But no.

According to Brett King, the reason he removed his son from Southampton General Hospital – despite him having just had a brain tumour operation – was because the hospital ‘refused to discuss’ proton beam treatment with him. The hospital denies this and that may be correct – I don’t know, I wasn’t there. But at the time the authorities were dealing with Brett and Ashya’s mum, Naghemeh, they were quite possibly suffering post-traumatic stress.

So it wasn’t the time to start treating them like potential criminals, was it?

Especially when you hear that despite being told proton beam wouldn’t help their little boy, we now hear it may.

Leaving aside this appalling ton-of-bricks treatment, there’s a serious issue here for ALL of us.

Because, like it or not, the UK is particularly notorious for telling the loved ones of people with cancer that certain treatments don’t exist or won’t help and expecting them to just believe it.

I’d always assumed this was because the drugs in question were not approved by the evil drug-rationing committee, NICE, and health managers didn’t want word getting round that some expensive treatments work, because everyone would want them.

Sometimes NHS hospitals DO know of a drug or treatment that would help a stricken patient but they don’t mention it because they believe the family in question might not be able to afford it.

Fair enough, you might think.

But I’ve got experience of this. And it’s worrying. Especially when you hear just what the NHS’s idea of ‘expensive’ really is.

When my sister was ill with cancer in 2000 she asked if she could receive a certain drug she had read about on the internet. The doctors told her that although her research was correct, and this drug probably would have a very good outcome for her, she couldn’t have it for free because the NHS had only licensed it for people with secondary cancer. So she would have to be that much nearer the abyss before the NHS would consider using this wonder drug to save her life. She was 32 at the time.

My mum asked if we could buy this drug and was told it was ‘very expensive’.

I braced myself to consider how our family could possibly raise the £150,000 or £300,000 which was what I calculated ‘very expensive’ might be.

Then, after more questioning, we were told this ‘very expensive’ drug would actually cost £6,000. The sum I could raise within five minutes on my credit card.

We got that medicine, they didn’t make her pay and 14 years on she’s still with us. And – note to penny-pinching politicos and NHS bean-counters everywhere – she paid more than £6,000 tax in her first year back at work after this miracle ‘expensive’ drug worked.

So, if you’re in my sister’s boat, keep on keeping on. And if you’re still tempted to condemn Ashya’s family, remember how you might feel if it was your kid.

Because even £300,000 is cheap at the price to give your baby another shot at life.

And if the worst comes to the worst you will have the small but vital comfort of knowing you did everything to save them.