UK culture secretary Maria Miller is planning to meet with Google, Facebook and other major online companies to discuss how to police access to illegal content on the internet.

The move comes in the wake of the trials of Mark Bridger (jailed for the murder of five-year-old April Jones) and Stuart Hazell (jailed for murdering 12-year-old Tia Sharp), both of whom had accessed child pornography online.

MPs and charities have already called for ISPs and search engines to restrict access to pornography in reaction to the cases, but the demands feed into wider concerns about access to adult content as evidenced by the fact the government is investigating an initiative to block access to porn over public Wi-Fi.

Miller's letter (sent to Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Facebook, BT, Virgin, Talk Talk, Vodafone, Sky, O2, EE, and Three) reflects the broader sweep of the government's concerns and cites discussion topics including access to illegal pornographic content, extremist material which might incite racial or religious hatred, and copyrighted material.

"It is clear that dangerous, highly offensive, unlawful, and illegal material is available through basic search functions and I believe that many popular search engines, websites, and ISPs could do more to prevent the dissemination of such material," says Miller in the letter.

"Greater efforts need to be made to prevent the uploading, downloading, and sharing of harmful material. Effective technological solutions have to be developed—and deployed—to minimize the harm done to businesses and consumers."

Commenting on the role of big business in the online ecosystem, she adds: "A relatively small number of organizations wield a great deal of online power—and I believe that with that power comes a great responsibility."

A previous statement sent to Wired.co.uk from director of communications and public affairs at Google, Scott Rubin, sets out Google's current policy as related to child porn content:

"Google has a zero-tolerance policy on child sexual abuse content. We are members and joint funders of the Internet Watch Foundation—an independent body that searches the web for child abuse imagery and then sends us links, which we remove from our search index. When we discover child abuse imagery or are made aware of it, we respond quickly to remove and report it to the appropriate law enforcement authorities."

This story originally appeared on Wired UK.