IN the vast ballroom of Blackpool's Winter Gardens, the slight figure of Sara Payne rose to her feet and, for almost eight electrifying minutes, delivered a speech that left 1,000 battle-hardened policemen close to
tears.

She had no prepared notes as she spoke of her murdered daughter Sarah and the need for Sarah's Law to protect children everywhere.

News of the World managing editor, Stuart Kuttner, who spoke just before her, said: "Earlier in the day, she had simply decided what she wanted to say at the start and end of her speech. She wrote nothing because, as she
said, 'Every word comes from the heart'."

Her audience on Tuesday, the Police Federation, listened in awe. When Sara finished there were a few seconds of silence before a tumultous standing ovation.

Today the News of the World is proud to publish this speech for the first time in full, word for word, for every mother and father in the land.

"HELLO, I'm often asked to speak and I drive people mad because I won't write speeches. I won't speak anybody else's words, so anything I say comes from the heart and is, as far as I'm concerned, the truth.

Why am I here? I'm here because I was what I thought part of a very normal family, we had a large family, a loud family.

We went to visit my mother and father-in-law for a weekend. The children asked if they could go out to play, it was sunny, it was hot, the cornfield is less than 50 yards away from the house.

Idyllic, some people may say.

We went for a walk down on the beach, the children played on the beach for a little while, they went back to the field.

At about 8 o'clock, in fact it was earlier than that, we couldn't find Sarah. She had just disappeared from view as I am sure any parent has lost sight of their child on numerous occasions without thought and you immediately panic.

It doesn't matter who you are or how big or strong you are, you panic.

Dark

We searched for the first five minutes not really worrying too much, thinking she was hiding.

We continued to search, we ran up and down, in and out of the field, down to the sea, every field we could find, every person we could stop.

And there weren't that many around, believe it or not, but every single person stopped, helped us look, went back over their steps, came back to us and started again.

When it began to get dark I grew frightened for my daughter. She's very scared of the dark- hates it.

We searched one more time and rang the police. We said she was eight, alone and she'd be scared.

Thank God the police acted in such a courageous way at that moment, they had the helicopters out and by morning there were thousands searching.

Every policeman had given up his time off and I can't tell you, had it not been for you guys I wouldn't have got my daughter back. OK it wasn't in the circumstances we wanted, but we got her home, there are many out there that
didn't.

So I'd like to thank you guys and I'd like to say what a brilliant job you do. You do the best you can and I know that each and every one of you put children first.

Anything we say or we do is not against you. This is about trying to make changes for the better, some people may agree and some people may not. That's up to you. What I'm saying is, give me an alternative.

Because I tell you something, if Roy Whiting, if I had known Roy Whiting had lived in that area, there's no way my children would have been out to play.

I'm not that over-protective, OK some might say I am a bit, but no more than any other parent. That would have saved my daughter's life.

All that I say is, how many lives would that have saved just by giving a second thought. When you make changes like this you never know how many lives you save because it's the ones that aren't hurt are the ones that are
saved. All that you can go by is by numbers, do they go down, do they go up, we don't know.

Naming and Shaming was hard. When the groups rioted, it was hard. We felt very responsible but we knew we were doing the right thing. Most of us at that point lived with our heads totally in the clouds when it came to sex
offenders.

I assumed that if somebody hurt a child, they went to prison. I assumed that they were on a register when they came out of prison, that the police had resources to look after them, that probation wouldn't let them out of
prison unless they were damn sure they weren't going to re-offend.

I've learnt so many things that horrify me and scare me as a parent. Children can't look after themselves, it's up to us as adults, and I hope that we all try our very best.

Naming and Shaming carried on with mine and Michael's full support, and I have to say that the News of the World team rang us on a daily basis to see if we wanted to stop or halt, or if we wanted to withdraw our support.

We never said that we would, and we never did. I still support that campaign because without it nobody would have listened to Sara Payne, mother of Sarah Payne.

They would have said: "Knee-jerk reaction, poor woman, there there, sorry she's been hurt, sorry your daughter is dead but there'is nothing we can do." Well I'm telling the government there IS something you can do, you can
give parents the power to look after their children.

I'm not asking for the register to be open, I'm not asking to know about every flasher, every family member that is molested, every groomer. I think there are better people than me to say whether these people should or
shouldn't be told.

What I am saying is that if you cannot keep Roy Whiting in prison, if you're going to let him out as an experiment to see whether he does it again, when every agency in the world is screaming at you: "This man is going to re-offend and you're going to let him out early," then you damn well better make sure the community at least know that he's around.

Whether that be by his name, by his address, or whether that is simply answering a personal question when a parent walks into a police station and says: "Is there a risk round here? Is there a risk to my child to go and
play down on the beach? Should I be wary?"

Well the answer is of course that in most places in Britain, as I'm sure most of you know, yes there's always a certain risk.

But when you have a predator in your midst that risk is high, very high. So yes, if we can get indeterminate sentencing in, there's no need for Sarah's Law. If we can get life to mean life, and when I say life I mean the whole of your natural life, then, yeah, there's no need.

But we all know that the European Court will not allow that, they will not allow it, they will not allow us to lock them up and throw away the key.

Strong

It isn't how it works and it isn't how we work as human beings.

There are lots of schemes that have been put forward, the Buddy scheme for instance, which I am very interested in supporting. But as we all know, that takes money, it takes volunteers and it takes a lot of strong
characters to carry that out.

I just want to give you a thought. Sarah would be alive if I'd known that Roy Whiting was there.

But my final thought is that when Roy Whiting is released from prison he doesn't go on the sex offenders register, he's a murderer and child abductor that means he doesn't go on the register.

That means that Sarah's Law doesn't count in that case. He killed my daughter and one day he will face probation. And I'm sure that the powers that be will say enough time has passed and he's paid his penalty.

What I say is that my grandchildren, my future grandchildren, are at a real risk from men like this and we have to find a way of protecting our children. Thank you.