Corbyn and Abbott ‘wreck’ law to protect child sex abuse victims

JEREMY Corbyn and Diane Abbott were last night accused of putting their ‘loony Left’ politics before the victims of paedophilia.

The attack came after Labour’s Home Affairs team, led by Ms Abbott, put down a ‘ wrecking amendment’ to a new child protection law, which is due to be debated by MPs on Wednesday.

The Crime (Overseas Production Orders) Bill would pave the way for the UK to be able to directly order American tech giants such as Google and Facebook to hand over data needed to convict British paedophiles within days.

But it requires a new international treaty with the United States as more than 90 per cent of online child abuse in the UK is linked to US-based software firms.

Currently, UK law enforcement officials have to apply to the US Department of Justice to get data held in America, but this process can take two years – allowing paedophiles to continue their abuse.

However, Labour is demanding that Britain write in special assurances to the new accord that no data we may theoretically share in return could ever be used to sentence a criminal to death. Washing- ton has warned the Home Office that any attempt to ‘attach strings’ to the treaty would kill it dead.

Last night, Security Minister Ben Wallace criticised the Labour leadership for ‘holding to ransom’ the data-sharing treaty.

He said: ‘The Islington clique at the top of the Labour Party is putting politics before jailing paedophiles in a nightmare vision of what it would be like if they were to ever get into power.

‘ The loony Left of the London Labour mafia are holding to ransom our children’s safety with an amendment that would destroy any chance of a treaty with our American allies.’

Mr Wallace urged moderate backbenchers to rebel against the leadership, saying: ‘Sensible Labour MPs have a chance to show Jeremy Corbyn and Diane Abbott that they will not play theoretical parliamentary games with the lives of vulnerable victims.’

Ahead of the Commons debate, Mr Wallace gave a chilling warning that ‘every day this Bill is delayed is another day another child could be abused’.

Explaining the urgent need for the new law, he said: ‘At the moment this process takes months and years, but this Bill and a new treaty with the United States, which we have in draft, would reduce that to days and weeks.’

The Mail on Sunday understands the US has warned Ministers that

‘Putting politics before jailing of paedophiles’

the proposed UK-US agreement would be likely to fall down in the Republican- controlled Senate if there was any attempt to ‘bind the hands’ of the American courts.

The Home Office has warned the new measures are needed urgently to help pursue paedophiles who are currently operating in Britain.

One operation that began in 2017 involved a UK male suspect using Facebook, Instagram, Gmail and Snapchat and pretending to be a teenage girl to extract indecent pictures from underage boys.

Data collected by the National Crime Agency helped to identify more than 150 potential child victims. However, the agency is still awaiting authorisation from a US judge to release further data.

A Labour spokesman said: ‘Neither the collective efforts of a collapsing Government to mollify President Trump nor the personal ambitions of unsung Ministers should make the UK complicit in executions, whether in Saudi Arabia or Texas.

‘We support the swift exchange of information to bring criminals to justice where there are assurances that the death penalty will not be applied.’