Missing sex offender details plan

Details can also go on a national Most Wanted website

Details of sex offenders who have gone missing are to be published annually by the Scottish Government.

Members of the Scottish Parliament's justice committee have been told the new arrangements will be in place by the autumn.

The move follows widespread concern at the two-and-a-half year delay in publicising the disappearance of a sex offender from the Glasgow area.

Martin Cusick, 52, from Clarkston, disappeared in October 2005.

Details of Cusick's disappearance were published by Strathclyde Police on Monday.

Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill said he could not comment specifically on that case.

What we have to do is make sure, where it's appropriate, public information is given Kenny MacAskill Justice Secretary

Mr MacAskill has written to MSPs on the justice committee.

They had previously carried out an inquiry into the management of child sex offenders.

They considered the issues in the wake of the murder of an eight-year-old boy in Glasgow.

Mark Cummings was killed and thrown down a rubbish chute by Stuart Leggate, a known sex offender who lived in the same tower block in the Royston area of the city in 2004.

They made 33 recommendations, almost all of which the government has now implemented.

Key among them was an annual report on the number of missing sex offenders, as well as the number of cases in which police or social workers have disclosed details of offenders living in the community.

Martin Cusick's picture was circulated in an attempt to trace him

Arrangements are in place to publish this information in forthcoming annual reports of the new Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPAs).

The minister told BBC Scotland: "We're committed as a government that when somebody seeks to go underground there should be no hiding place for them.

"That's why we gave the powers for photographs to be used publicly and indeed on the internet and we support the police in that usage.

"At the end of the day what we have to do is make sure, where it's appropriate, public information is given."

Mr MacAskill said more offenders would doubtless discover in the months to come that if they seek to go into hiding, communities and the public would be notified.