A boy injured for life after he ate dishwasher powder from a container with a faulty safety cap has been denied compensation.

Connor Pollard, now nine, was just 13 months old when he ate the powder at the family home in Broome Close, Horsham.

He has had 40 operations to repair damage to his oesophagus and will never make a complete recovery.

Parents Linda and Phil thought they had won the battle for compensation last May when a Brighton County Court judge ruled against Tesco, which sold the powder, and Robert McBride Ltd, which made the product.

They had hoped for compensation running into hundreds of thousands of pounds.

But at the Court of Appeal yesterday, Lord Justice Laws cleared both firms of negligence and said that under the Consumer Protection Act 1987 the case "simply does not run". He said the outcome for Connor was "certainly unfortunate".

The accident happened when Mrs Pollard put the powder on a kitchen work surface with the lid on and went to answer the telephone.

Connor climbed on to a pile of laundry and pulled the powder on to the floor. Mrs Pollard cut off the call after two minutes when she saw Connor had left the room and found him in the kitchen with the bottle to his mouth.

His throat shrank to the size of a pin hole and he was on a life support machine for week.

The bottle had a child-proof squeeze-and-turn cap but it was defective.

Lord Justice Laws ruled the cap was still harder to open than an ordinary screw-top cap so there had been no breach of the Act. He made it clear Mrs Pollard was not responsible for the accident.

Mr Pollard said his solicitors were considering taking the case to the House of Lords and he was looking into whether legal aid would be granted.

He said: "It's incredible that the packaging was proved to be faulty but the companies were not found liable.

"It seems the Act is there to protect the manufacturers, not the public, and that needs to be looked at.

"I've been told that if the case goes in our favour the law will change and they will have to make sure all child-proof caps are up to standard. It's amazing that they aren't already.

"Connor is never going to get better. He's always going to have trouble eating and drinking.

"My wife is devastated about the case but we will carry on until we can't carry on anymore and take it to Europe if we have to."