Smith: Creating hostile environment of sex offenders

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith wants to create a hostile environment for sex offenders online in a bid to aid children to live lives free from fear.

Ms Smith today announced plans to monitor sex offenders online by passing their email addresses to the police and social networking sites.

Plans, working with the Child Exploitation Online Protection Agency and industry, include a five year prison sentence for sex offenders failing to give police their email addresses or provide a false email address.

Ms Smith said: "I want to see every child living their lives free from fear, whether they are meeting friends in a youth club or in a chat room.

"We have some of the strictest controls on sex offenders in the world to protect our children.

"We are working together with police, industry and charities to create a hostile environment for sex offenders on the internet and are determined to make it as hard for predators to strike online, as in the real world."