The Home Office backed down yesterday over plans to introduce a US-style “Megan’s law” to deal with child sex offenders living in the community.

Parents will not be given the right to information about paedophiles in their neighbourhoods except in very specific circumstances. Nor are they to be told how many sex offenders live near local school routes and playgrounds after the proposals were criticised by children’s charities and senior police officers.

John Reid was told that proposals for a “Megan’s law” could leave children more at risk from paedophiles rather than giving them greater protection.

In December the Home Office said that members of the public would be able to ask for checks to be run on local people they suspected of being paedophiles. But Mr Reid’s department said yesterday that this would not now happen.

Instead, the proposals will concentrate on potential child abuse in the home and will have little or no impact on “stranger danger” incidents involving sex attackers unknown to a child. Parents, guardians and carers will be able to ask whether a person has child-sex convictions only if that person is able to spend time alone with the child.

Single mothers will be able to ask for the Criminal Records Bureau to carry out a check on the background of a new partner or boyfriend, as part of the drive to tackle the paedophiles who prey on mothers living alone with their children.

Pilot schemes in three areas giving single women the right to ask for checks are to begin next month. This would build on existing laws that allow police and the Probation Service to approach and warn a woman who has begun a relationship with a known child-sex offender.

The Home Office retreat came after severe criticism from police and children’s charities. Martin Narey, a former permanent secretary at the Home Office who is now chief executive of Barnardo’s, led the attack on the proposals.

Mr Narey said that he and the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children had been given assurances by the Home Office over the amount of information to be released to the public. “Sex offenders need a great deal of supervision,” he said. “If they flee that supervision — and you can be sure that if we have a Megan’s law they will flee that supervision — they are much more dangerous.”

Sir Chris Fox, former president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, said that telling parents the number but not the names of paedophiles in their area could lead to cases of mistaken identity and attacks on innocent people.

“Megan’s law” was passed in New Jersey in 1994 after the rape and murder of Megan Kanka by Jesse Timmendequas, a convicted sex offender who was living across the street from her. It gives parents access to names and addresses of known paedophiles in their neighbourhood. A campaign for a British version, referred to as “Sarah’s law”, followed the death of Sarah Payne, who was murdered by the paedophile Roy Whiting in 2000.

Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, said: “It shows staggering insensitivity to claim that ‘Megan’s law’ was being piloted when the Home Office has now been forced to admit that nothing of the sort is about to happen.”

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