THE murder of 17-year-old Ashleigh Hall by a man she met on Facebook has prompted The Northern Echo to call for social networking sites to be regulated.

The Government is being urged to introduce legislation that forces websites to adopt measures to stop sex offenders grooming and abusing young members.

The move has the backing of Ashleigh’s family, as well as child safety experts and North-East politicians.

At present, social networking sites are encouraged by the Government to regulate themselves.

However, this has failed to stop numerous cases of sex offenders using these sites to meet and assault children.

The call for laws to regulate the way the sites operate has been made by The Northern Echo as part of its Safety Net campaign.

The campaign was launched after the murder of the Darlington teenager by convicted sex offender Peter Chapman, who posed on Facebook as a 19-year-old.

It is this ability of offenders to upload fake identities that Safety Net wants ministers to address.

The campaign has been endorsed by Ashleigh’s grandfather, Mike Hall.

He said: “I’ll back that – too true. Anything that can be done to help stop this happening again, needs to be done.”

Councillor Jenny Chapman represents the ward where Andrea Hall, Ashleigh’s mother, lives and is the Labour prospective parliamentary candidate for Darlington.

She said: “The internet is the next frontier and it needs to be taken very seriously.

“Whatever the solutions are, it is right that the Government should concern itself with it. The sites also need to take responsibility.”

Sedgefield MP Phil Wilson also backed the move. He said: “I have no problem with something that supports the tightening of the regulations for social networking sites.”

However, Facebook said that regulations would not work.

Sophy Silver, spokeswoman for the site, claimed that technology was changing so fast that regulation would not be able to keep up.

She said: “The most effective way to help kids to stay safe online is for there to be strong partnership with the authorities and the various service providers.

“In the UK, this partnership has been created in the form of UK Council for Child Internet Safety.”

The Department for Children, Schools and Families confirmed last night that the Government’s current policy was for self-regulation.

A spokesman said: “We have and will legislate against criminal activity, such as distributing child abuse images and grooming.

“But the internet is a vast international network. This means that it is difficult for any one country to effectively regulate the internet, because efforts to regulate content hosted in the UK could just lead to the content being hosted abroad.”