Paediatric experts told a judge yesterday that baby Charlotte Wyatt, who weighed only a pound and measured 5in when she was born three months premature at St Mary's Hospital, Portsmouth, last October, had no feelings other than continuing pain.

Mr Justice Hedley, who ruled that she should not be rescuscitated again, was told that she cannot see or hear, has serious brain, lung and kidney damage, is fed through a tube, needs a constant supply of oxygen and is incapable of voluntary movement or response. She has already stopped breathing three times.

Whatever happens, she is not expected to live beyond a further year and is likely to succumb to a respiratory infection this winter.

Her quality of life has been described as "terrible and permanent".

Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust, which had to seek a court ruling in the absence of consent from the parents, has said that, in the event of another respiratory crisis, it will keep Charlotte alive long enough for them to be at her cotside during her final moments.

Her father, Darren, a committed Christian, as is his wife, Debbie, had told the court: "When you get to the stage when you grow to love someone, you can't just throw them away like a bad egg and say you will get a different egg."

He described Charlotte as a fighter who "doesn't want to go" and described how she squeezed his finger when he cuddled her.

"She knows who we are and we are her parents," he said.

Mr Wyatt said he believed in miracles and in the power of medical science to help her carry on, even for a couple of years, so that he and his wife could be with her and bond with her.

He urged doctors to carry out a tracheotomy - the insertion of a tube through the throat - to help Charlotte's breathing, and pledged that, if she did not improve within five days or so, he and his wife would let her go with tender loving care.

The judge said that, although he believed that further invasive and aggressive treatment would be intolerable to Charlotte, "I prefer to determine her best interests on the basis of finding what is the best that can be done for her".

The judge said he had been informed by the medical evidence as to the prospects and cost of her "aggressive" treatment but had "looked much wider than that and seen not just a physical being but a body, mind and spirit expressed in a human personality of unique worth who is profoundly precious to her parents".

He said: "It is for that personality of unique worth that I have striven to discern her best interests.

"It is my one regret that my search has led to a different answer than that sought by these parents."

He emphasised that the relief granted to the hospital was only permissive and did not relieve them "of the right or responsibility for advising or giving the treatment that they and the parents think right in the light of the circumstances as they develop".

He added: "All it does is to authorise them in the event of disagreement between the parents and themselves not to send the child for artificial ventilation or similar aggressive treatment.

"Secondly, I would like to ask the treating doctors - without in any way suggesting an answer to them - to give further consideration to an elective tracheotomy on the basis of its possible contribution to Charlotte's palliative care."

The judge said there was no doubt as to the genuineness of the parents' view.

But it was for the court to oversee the best interests of those who could not make decisions for themselves.

He said this left him feeling a little uncomfortable because he was being asked to override the views of caring parents as to what was best for their daughter.