Dr Alan Billings South Yorkshire Police and Crime Commissioner said:

“I welcome the fact that the Home Secretary sees the scale of child sexual abuse on-line and the need for additional resources to tackle it.

“As well as trying to prevent abusive images on the internet, we also need to recognise that the grooming of children for sexual purposes has also moved to the internet.

“I spent sometime recently with the unit dealing with this in South Yorkshire. I was shocked by the speed with which paedophiles were able to make contact with vulnerable children on line and sickened by some of the images children could be quickly exposed to.

“We are only just realising the scale of CSE on-line but the police need more resources otherwise they will have to take officers and staff from other areas of vital work to deal with this growing area of abuse and vulnerability.”