Robert Excell, 66, will be met by British police officers when he arrives in London today after being deported from Australia. They are powerless to hold Excell, who has spent the past 37 out of 39 years in various jails in Australia for a string of child sex convictions dating back to 1965, when he was found guilty of sodomising a boy aged 7. But he will be made to go to court at the earliest opportunity to be placed on the sex offenders register.

The authorities are also considering making him the subject of a sexual offences prevention order, under which he can be banned from going within a certain distance of schools or children’s playgrounds. A Whitehall source said: “We are aware that this man is dangerous and he is on our radar.”

Excell left Australia yesterday after the country’s immigration department cancelled his visa and ordered his expulsion. The Western Australia state government had planned to deport him in March, but the move was delayed by a police investigation into allegations that he had committed rape while in jail in the state capital, Perth.

Excell left England for Australia at the age of 10, but was never allowed to become an Australian citizen. He has been paroled from prison three times and committed another sex crime on each occasion. Despite his record, the Australian authorities have said that they now consider him a low to moderate risk.

He was released in 1973 but later raped a nine-year-old boy and, in 1977 when he was freed again, he raped a 13-year-old boy. In 1981 he was again freed on parole but was later convicted of indecent behaviour with a boy under 14.

Last month Jim McGinty, the attorney-general of Western Australia, said that Excell would never be freed from prison and allowed to live in the state. “He will be released solely for the purposes of deportation, and he will be taken straight from prison to the airport to be deported to Britain,” he said.

Excell will immediately be taken to sign the sex offenders register when he returns to Britain, but police will be unable to detain him. In 2003 the law was changed allowing people convicted of sex offences abroad to be placed on the register.

The convicted paedophile is also likely to be the subject of an interim sexual offences prevention order, which applies to offenders convicted of sexual or violent offences overseas and who pose a risk of serious sexual harm in Britain. Breach of a prevention order carries a maximum sentence of five years’ imprisonment.

Excell will also be monitored under the Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements by a team made up of police, probation officers and others, including doctors and social workers.

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