DORSET’S police and crime commissioner has given the Home Secretary a blunt warning that helping tackle the 80,000 paedophiles identified as presenting 'some kind of sexual threat' to children online, will require more funding.

Following a hard-hitting speech by Sajid Javid, in which he pledged to make tackling online perverts a personal mission, Martyn Underhill welcomed the ‘robust and forthright speech’ saying that shock statistics released by the National Crime Agency ‘speak for themselves’.

However, he added: “The figure of 23 child sexual exploitation (CSE) offences a day being recorded by Forces in England and Wales must warrant an increase in funding and resources; if we are to be expected to deal with this scale of offending.”

He said his office had awarded funding to Acts Fast, a local Dorset based charity, which provides dedicated counselling to non-abusive parents, carers and families following a disclosure of child sexual abuse. “Acts Fast aims to fill the void left by statutory services by providing a dedicated counselling service, as well as drop-in sessions across Dorset,” he said.

The Home Secretary said he had met an officer during a visit to the NCA's Child Exploitation Online Protection Command, who had previously worked in counter-terrorism for over 20 years. “He told me how in all his years of working, he's never been so shocked by the scale of the threat or the determination of the offenders as he is in his current job," said Mr Javid. "The threat has evolved a lot more quickly than the industry's response and industry has just not kept up.”

His call to action was backed by Cllr Mike White of Poole, who is portfolio holder for the borough’s Children and Young People’s Services and said that fighting child sexual exploitation had been: “A major priority for us. This kind of exploitation has a devastating effect on children and therefore on the council, which is why I created a working party to look into it in 2016, with a follow-up report this July,” he said.

One of the report’s major findings was that there was a strong correlation between children who run away from home or care and the danger of abuse. “Therefore we are now interviewing around 80 per cent of these young people to see how we can help and identify anything which needs to be looked at,” he said.

Bournemouth’s deputy leader, Nicola Greene, said she believed the Home Secretary’s speech would ‘raise the profile of the issue’. “We need to build up that confidence in people having those conversations and I’d really welcome that,” she said.