THE grandfather of a murdered schoolboy has backed new sex laws aimed at protecting children.

But Harry Hammond, whose grandson, Wesley Neailey was killed in 1998, said the law needed to go even further if children were to be protected from paedophiles.

In the most radical reform regarding sex crimes for more than 100 years, the Sexual Offences Act has toughened measures against child sex abuse and so-called grooming.

The grooming offence means anyone convicted of contacting a child, including through the Internet, with the intention of committing a sex offence, would face up to ten years in prison.

Dominic McKilligan, who had been convicted of indecently assaulting children in his home town of Bourne-mouth in 1994, killed 11-year-old Wesley in Newcastle.

He was not on the Sex Offenders' Register because his three-year supervision order ended the day before the Act came into force.

It meant police were not told McKilligan's whereabouts when he was released from Aycliffe Young People's Centre, in County Durham.

He was free to secure a flat in Newcastle where he pounced on Wesley, then dumped his body in a shallow grave. McKilligan was convicted of murder and rape, but the rape conviction was quashed on appeal.

Mr Hammond, of Newcastle, welcomed the new measures, but said yesterday: "The thing with paedophiles is they never give up.

"The only way to stop them is to lock them up for good."

Alasdair Gillespie a senior lecturer in criminal justice at Teesside University was on the Home Office task force which helped form the new laws.

He said: "We hope it will help catch the offenders before they commit a sex offence, so we are protecting children and, hopefully, preventing them becoming victims."

Wendy Shepherd, children's services manager at Barnardos, said the laws would help to protect children from prostitution, by making it illegal to buy sex from under-18s.

Other changes include the end of a ruling that allowed men to claim sex with a child under 13 was consensual, and a law requiring offenders convicted abroad to sign on the Sex Offenders' Register.