Travel rules tightened for child sex offenders

LONDON (Reuters) - Laws to control the movement of convicted child sex offenders will be tightened, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said on Wednesday.

Under the proposals, sex offenders could be banned from travelling abroad for up to five years and will have to tell police at an earlier stage of their plans to go overseas.

The announcement comes as former pop star and convicted paedophile Gary Glitter, 64, was due to return to Britain after spending nearly three years in a Vietnamese prison for child sex abuse offences.

Campaigners have said the authorities needed to take tough action to stop him travelling abroad again.

Smith said the case had raised issues about the system but added it was constantly under review.

"The UK has a rigorous system in place for managing child sex offenders which is among the toughest in the world. The changes I'm announcing today will strengthen that even further," she said in a statement.

Smith said the proposals, which will require new legislation, would strengthen Foreign Travel Orders (FTO), which prevent sex offenders from travelling overseas at all or to certain countries.

These currently only last six months, and Smith said they were looking at extending them to five years and also automatically removing paedophiles' passports if they were subject to a blanket travel ban.

The proposals would also remove the need for police to produce recent evidence from within the last six months to obtain Sexual Offences Prevention Orders.