A High Court judge has ruled that doctors can lawfully stop providing life-support treatment to 12-year-old Archie Battersbee after reviewing evidence at a hearing in London.

Mr Justice Hayden on Monday reviewed evidence at a hearing in the Family Division of the High Court in London on the life support treatment for Archie Battersbee from Southend.

Doctors treating Archie Battersbee say continued treatment is not in his best interests and should end.

Archie's parents, Hollie Dance and Paul Battersbee, from Southend, disagree, and say his heart is still beating.

Read more >>> High Court judge set to deliver ruling today on future of Archie's treatment

Mr Justice Hayden, who reviewed evidence at a hearing in the Family Division of the High Court earlier this week, on Friday concluded that ending treatment was in Archie's best interests.

He described what had happened to Archie as a "tragedy of immeasurable dimensions".

The judge said: "This court has to ask itself whether continuation of ventilation in this case is in Archie's best interests.

"It is with the most profound regret, but on the most compelling of evidence, that I am driven to conclude that it is not.

"Accordingly, the court cannot authorise or declare lawful the continuation of this present treatment.

"It is obvious from the detail of the treatment that I have set out above that it is intrusive, burdensome and intensive. If there were even a possibility that it could achieve some improvement to Archie's condition, it would be both proportionate and purposeful.

"Where, as here, the treatment is futile, it compromises Archie's dignity, deprives him of his autonomy, and becomes wholly inimical to his welfare.

"It serves only to protract his death, whilst being unable to prolong his life.

"Having come to this conclusion, there emerges the prospect of an end to Archie's life, which reverberates more closely with the way he lived in the past.

"Arrangements can be made... that afford Archie the opportunity for him to die in peaceful circumstances and in the embrace of the family he loved."

Read more >>> LIVE: Updates as judge rules doctors can end Archie Battersbee's life-support treatment

Another High Court judge, Mrs Justice Arbuthnot, had earlier concluded that Archie was dead.

But Court of Appeal judges upheld a challenge, made by Archie's parents, to decisions taken by Mrs Justice Arbuthnot and said evidence should be reviewed.

Doctors treating Archie at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, east London, have told judges they think he is "brain-stem dead" and say continued life support treatment is not in his best interests.

Lawyers representing the Royal London Hospital's governing trust, Barts Health NHS Trust, have asked for decisions about what moves are in Archie's best interests.

Archie's mother has told how she found him unconscious on April 7 and thinks he might have been taking part in an online challenge.

He has not regained consciousness.