Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the potential merits of imposing restrictions on the online activity of convicted sex offenders.

The UK has some of the toughest powers in the world to deal with sex offenders and we are committed to ensuring that the system is as robust as it can be. The Government believes that the current legislation provides a sufficiently robust framework to allow the police to monitor sex offenders and minimise the likelihood of reoffending. We keep this legislation under constant review to ensure that law enforcement continues to have the tools it needs to tackle the evolving threat of online exploitation.

Under current legislation, sex offenders can have a range of restrictions placed on them depending on what the court deems necessary to protect the public. This can include; a condition that the individual cannot use any computer unless specialist computer monitoring software is installed on it; prohibiting the offender from using any device capable of accessing the internet unless it has the capacity to retain and display the history of internet use; the offender makes the device available on request for inspection by a police officer; and prohibiting the offender from deleting their internet history.