A 70-year-old who took baby oil and new underwear to meet an underage boy for sex has been jailed for three-and-a-half years after he was caught on camera by paedophile hunters.

Sex offender John Dunnigan had travelled 150 miles from Blackburn to Newcastle, where he planned to meet a 15-year-old boy called ‘Ben’, who he had been chatting to online.

He later pleaded guilty attempting to meet a child following sexual grooming, breach of a Sexual Offences Prevention Order and sexual activity in the presence of a child.

Jailing him for three-and-a-half years, Judge Penny Moreland told him: ‘The items found in your car clearly indicate what you had in mind for that meeting but as it transpired the profile was a false profile put up by an adult in order to identify people, like you, interested in making contact, for sexual purposes, with children.’