A leading children's charity has called on the government to introduce new legislation to prevent the sexual abuse of young children.

In a hard-hitting report published on Wednesday Barnardo's called on the government to toughen existing laws and ensure that services are available for vulnerable young people.

Research by the charity found that boys as young as 10 are being lured into prostitution either as a result of running away from care homes and their families or through paedophiles.

The charity said existing laws must be changed so that young men who are sexually exploited are treated as victims of abuse. It also called for changes to Part One of the Sex Offenders Act so that their abusers would become registered sex offenders.

Barnardo's claimed that the government also needed to co-ordinate and fund research into the abuse through prostitution of boys and young men saying the issue remains "unrecognised and unaddressed".

'When we first started working with boys abused through prostitution we found that it was an almost invisible problem. We are now working with 123 boys abused in this way and have strong supporting evidence from police forces and childcare professionals that it is a much bigger problem," says the report's author, Tink Palmer. "We believe our figures are just the tip of the iceberg."