The business secretary, Vince Cable, has become the first cabinet minister to intervene over the "shocking" availability of illegal child abuse images online, urging Google to take more action to police explicit material.
Cable said internet companies should act quicker to "cover the anomalies" amid fears from child protection charities that the proliferation of indecent images online is putting more children at risk.
The NSPCC warned of a "worrying link" between child abuse images and the murder of five-year-old April Jones, whose killer Mark Bridger was jailed for life on Thursday.
Cable admitted it was "very, very difficult" to police the internet, but added: "Mark Bridger appears to be influenced by watching child pornography on the internet. Ultimately, this has got to come from the public. If they see any evidence of this happening, of getting it to the police immediately.
"I think probably where there is some scope for taking action is getting the companies that host these sites, Google and the rest of it, to be more proactive in policing what is there."
Asked whether he believed the problem was impossible to police, Cable told BBC Radio 5 Live: "Very very difficult. That's the nature of the internet. It is something that governments don't and can't control. But we've got to try to deal with that problem. Now we've had an awful case of people being influenced in that way we've got to try to find ways of covering the anomalies."
Keith Vaz, chair of the Commons home affairs select committee, said he was "appalled" that child abuse images were so readily accessible online and urged the government to adhere to a commitment to establish a code of conduct with internet service providers.
Source: The Guardian
