Paedophile ban on networking sites

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Ministers announced measures designed to block child sex offenders from having access to social networking sites such as Facebook.

Convicted child sex offenders will be forced to disclose their email addresses to police, who will then pass the details to websites to block access.

Ms Smith acknowledged that the measures are not "foolproof" but said they are a step towards making sure children are protected. "We need to patrol the internet to keep predators away from children in the same way as we patrol the real world," Ms Smith told GMTV. "That can never be completely foolproof but we will do our best and we will work with whichever partners we can in order to lead the way internationally."

The Home Office admitted details of the scheme are yet to be worked out and questions remain over whether the global nature of the web could hamper the complex issues involved. For example, MySpace and Facebook - the world's fifth and sixth most popular websites in terms of traffic - are both based in California.

But Ms Smith said the internet is "not a no-go area when it comes to law enforcement" and that the UK is a world leader through the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) "in tracking paedophiles online, in catching them and helping to protect children".

She said: "Given that we are experts at it, I want to push even a bit further to see what we can do to protect children. We are changing the law... so that we have got better control over the way in which child sex offenders are able to use the internet."

New online safety guidelines published by the Home Office also urged parents to attempt a new kind of embarrassing conversation with their offspring - about the dangers of online flirting and sexuality.

Home Office minister Vernon Coaker said the anti-paedophile measures will be brought in once Parliament has passed legislation allowing ministers to vary the terms of the sex offenders register.

The Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill, currently in the Lords, could be in force by the autumn. It would be applied retrospectively to more than 30,000 sex offenders on the register, a Home Office spokesman said.