A REGISTER of vicious offenders could be piloted in Bolton next spring.

Bolton South East MP Dr Brian Iddon will lobby Home Office Minister Hilary Benn to initiate the scheme in the town.

He will present Mr Benn with a dossier of cuttings from the Bolton Evening News covering the trial of Ronald Mariner -- who had previous convictions for violence against children before he murdered seven-year-old Ryan Mason.

Mariner, aged 23, of Bowland Drive, Johnson Fold, had tortured another Bolton schoolboy and had fractured a baby's skull before killing Ryan.

The proposed vicious offenders register would run in parallel with the sex offenders register and would monitor people with convictions for violence against children.

Home Office officials had been working on the scheme before the Mariner case and they have now revealed details.

Dr Iddon said: "Mariner moved from Blackburn to Bolton and did not tell police. If he had been on a vicious offenders register he would have had to have done so.

"Police could then have told Ryan's mother (who was Mariner's lover) that a vicious offender was in her home." The register of vicious offenders would impose the same restrictions as the sex offenders register.

Registered sex offenders are required to report to their local police station within three days of being convicted or on release from prison, to provide details of their address and to allow police to take an up-to-date photograph.

Police then monitor the whereabouts of offenders for the duration of their registration period with a frequency determined by their level of assessed risk.

It would be a matter for the courts to decide when to put a person on the vicious offenders register. Offenders likely to find themselves on the register would have been jailed for 12 months or longer.

Registered vicious offenders would also be given treatment in the form of psychological counselling.

Dr Iddon said: "People who just get into fights in a pub would not be put on the register. It would be for people who have attacked children for offences such as Mariner had previously been convicted of before the murder.

"I am not in favour of this register being retrospective -- I think it should just be for future cases."

The register to be piloted by the Home Office in the spring would be on a single national IT database shared by the police and probation service.

The register would cover about 70 offences and would allow both agencies to share the most current information on offenders, including latest risk assessments.

Det Supt Jack Dees, who led the Ryan Mason murder investigation, has backed the calls for a register of dangerous offenders.