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Hundreds of sex offenders across the UK slipped off the radar of police in a three-year period, the BBC can reveal.

Freedom of Information requests by BBC News to 45 police forces reveal 729 sex offenders had gone missing or were wanted for arrest from 2019-2021.

Abuse survivors have called on the government to introduce a new law to ban sex offenders changing their names.

The Home Office says it has "some of the toughest powers in the world to deal with sex offenders".

Calling the situation a scandal, MP Sarah Champion said the key reason so many offenders went missing was because they had changed their names.

Perpetrators should not able to change their names and escape the authorities and their pasts, according to campaigners. MPs were due to discuss the issue on Thursday.

The BBC Shared Data Unit also found that almost 1,500 registered sex offenders notified police forces of lawful name changes. Twenty-one police forces provided those figures.

The campaign group, the Safeguarding Alliance, has raised the scale of this issue since 2019.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-64624921