PM's pledge to overhaul terror laws amid 'tidal wave' of online violence

Technology giants urged to remove content 'that murderers find inspiring'

- Robert Booth, Vikram Dodd and Peter Walker

Terrorism laws will be overhauled and technology companies urged to remove the "tidal wave" of online violence inspiring acts of murder, ministers have said amid growing anger over the Southport killings.

After it emerged that Axel Rudakubana had accessed violent content in his bedroom before stabbing three girls to death in July, Keir Starmer said it could not be right that "with just a few clicks, people can watch video after horrific video, videos that in some cases are never taken down".

As he promised legal reforms to allow attackers to be charged under terrorism laws even if they lacked a coherent ideology, the prime minister said: "You can't tell me that the material this individual viewed before committing these murders should be accessible on mainstream social media platforms."

Rudakubana was 17 when he killed Bebe King, six, Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, and Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven. He had been referred to the anti-radicalisation Prevent programme three times but was seen only once face to face by officials from the scheme, the Guardian has learned.

All three times Prevent decided it should not take on his case.

The number of people seeing content online depicting or encouraging violence or injury has increased year on year, according to the communications regulator Ofcom.

A total of 11% of users aged 18 or older had seen such material - up from 9% a year earlier.