Home Office crackdown on internet paedophiles

The proposals include:

• Legislation to tackle paedophile "grooming" activity on and off-line, including a new civil order to protect children from an adult making contact with them for a harmful or unlawful sexual purpose whether by email or in Internet chat rooms;
• A best practice model of Internet chat safety measures for providers, including a requirement for clear safety messages and tools, such as 'alert' buttons, to be displayed in chat rooms; and
• Computer awareness training for the police and child protection practitioners to ensure that all officers know how computers can assist in the detection and investigation of crime and how to collect and preserve the integrity of digital evidence.

Home Secretary David Blunkett said:

"Protecting our children, whether on the internet or anywhere else has to be our top priority. The Internet brings massive benefits, opening up a world of opportunities for young people, but sadly, it also brings new risks from paedophiles who try to abuse their trust.

"I will be consulting Government colleagues and the legal profession over the summer to ensure that we can place new anti-grooming laws on the statute books as soon as possible. There should be no hiding places, online or offline, for the insidious activities of paedophiles.

"The police, the industry involved in providing Internet services in the UK and child protection organisations represented on the Task Force are to be congratulated for delivering some impressive results in a short space of time. And I look forward to seeing further progress to make the UK the best and safest place in the world for children to use the Internet."

The Task Force is expected to develop its proposal over the summer and to report on them again in the autumn. A further progress report will be made to the Home Secretary early in 2002.