FOLLOWING the tragic murder of her daughter by paedophile Roy Whiting, the mother of Sarah Payne made an agonised plea to the authorities to make sure that this stops happening time and time again. Almost immediately, Home Office Minister Beverley Hughes insisted that the government would learn the lessons about protecting the public.

I am afraid her words sound very hollow.

Over the last decade, there have been lots of opportunities for government ministers, both Conservative and Labour, to learn the lessons and act accordingly. Yet lots more children have been killed by a paedophile already known to the police because he had at least one conviction for sexual offences against a child.

Roy Whiting had assaulted a child before, but he was released to re-offend two years into a paltry four-year sentence. That has to be unacceptable.

What incenses me is that psychiatrists who make the decisions to release the likes of Whiting may stay in their well-paid jobs, leaving behind a devastated family whose lives will never be the same again.

Perhaps if their own jobs were on the line they would not be so keen to send the likes of Whiting back in to the community.

D PEARSON (Mr), Rawstorne Street, Blackburn.