Ministers are preparing tough new measures against sex tourism to close legal loopholes which British paedophiles are exploiting in order to abuse children abroad.
The crackdown is intended to combat the growing trend of sexual predators travelling to parts of Europe to prey on young people, rather than established centres of child prostitution such as south east Asia, because they stand less chance of getting caught in Europe.
The Home Office has privately accepted that existing legislation intended to thwart travelling sex offenders is inadequate and needs to be improved.
It has been persuaded by evidence gathered by campaigners against the international child sex trade that flaws in the Sexual Offences Act 2003 have led to an increase in Britons visiting countries such as Romania and the Czech Republic to have sex with underage boys and girls.
A review involving the Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, and Paul Goggins, the minister for organised crime, is concentrating on four key areas of the Act which, organisations such as the NSPCC have warned, inadvertently help paedophiles to avoid prosecution.
· The Act specifies that sex tourists can only be charged if they have sex with someone under 16, and just four prosecutions have been mounted since 2003. Campaigners want the age of consent in such cases to rise to 18.
· All 29,000 people on the sex offenders' register must now tell the police if they plan to go overseas for more than three days, so the authorities abroad can be informed. Ministers are likely to oblige those convicted of sexual offences to disclose all plans to visit other countries.
· Someone who abuses children abroad can only be prosecuted in the UK if their behaviour constituted a criminal offence in the foreign country as well as here. But the low age of sexual consent in some places - it is 14 in Romania and 15 in Bulgaria - can make it impossible for criminal charges to be laid under British law. Ministers are considering requests that in future someone who commits an offence anywhere in the world that would be an offence in this country can be arrested and taken to court.
· Foreign travel orders can be imposed to restrict or prevent a known sex criminal from leaving the country for up to six months if they are deemed to pose a threat to children abroad. But just one order has been imposed since the law came into force in 2003. Children's charities want police and magistrates courts to use them much more often.
'The law at the moment has loopholes that enable British offenders to escape the eyes of the British authorities and act with impunity within countries in Europe, such as the three-day rule,' said Christine Beddoe, director of ECPAT UK, a coalition of charities such as Barnardos and Save the Children which campaigns against child prostitution.
'We are concerned that because of that rule, and the rise of low-cost airlines, Britons who want to sexually abuse children are increasingly going to short-haul destinations such as Romania, the Czech Republic and Bulgaria where children are vulnerable because of poverty, weak laws and the presence of local people working as go-betweens to facilitate the exploitation of children.'
More Britons are being prosecuted for child sex offences in eastern Europe. Businessman Geoffrey Neal Mason was freed from jail in Romania last January after serving four years of a nine-year sentence for having sex with several children aged as young as 10.
Whitehall sources indicated that the law would be strengthened. One member of the inter-departmental ministerial working group on sexual offending, which will agree the changes said constructive suggestions had been made about how to make it easier to deter and punish sex tourists. A decision is due in the summer.
A Home Office spokesman said that changes were possible. 'The stocktake of the Sex Offences Act will enable us to ensure that our legislation is as effective as possible,' he said.