Smash hit

She argued that Mr Johnston initially gave consent to their creation, storage and use and should not be able to withdraw it. However, current British laws require that both the man and woman give consent for treatment and can withdraw their consent up to the point when the embryos are implanted.

Mr Johnson has said that he does not want the financial or emotional burden of having a child with Ms Evans and wants to decide for himself if and when to start a family.

Speaking at a press conference at his solicitor's office he said: “I’m just releaved.”

“Of course I’m sympathetic to the situation that she’s in, but I think common sense has prevailed. I want to be able to choose as and when I become a parent. I would like to know and choose when I start a family and to have that brought into question was really very difficult.”

Expert View

The law allows Natallie Evans' partner to withdraw his consent. Plainly, that is the end of the argument

Gary Slapper

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He said he would like to start a family "if I meet the right person and the situation is correct."

The human rights judges said the issues raised by the case were “undoubtedly of a morally and ethically delicate nature.”

The judgment declared: “The Grand Chamber, in common with every other court which had examined the case, had great sympathy for the applicant, who clearly desired a genetically-related child above all else.

"However, given the above considerations, including the lack of any European consensus on that point, it did not consider that the applicant’s right to respect for the decision to become a parent in the genetic sense should be accorded greater weight than (Mr Johnston’s) right to respect for his decision not to have a genetically-related child with her.”

The case had been dismissed by the High Court in London and the Court of Appeal, and the House of Lords, the last legal resort in the UK, would not consider it.

Ms Evans then turned to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, arguing that the British courts’ refusal to allow her to use the embryos breaches the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees the “right to family life” and that the regulations breach discrimination laws, as they allow her former partner to decide her fate.

In March last year, a seven-judge panel were asked to decide whether the 1990 Human Embryology and Fertilisation Act, which sets out the laws governing fertility treatment, violated the human rights of either Ms Evans, or the embryos. If the decision had gone in her favour it would have had significant consequences for the regulations surrounding fertility treatment in the UK.

The panel of seven judges ruled against her 5-2, leaving only the Grand Chamber as a last resort.

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