A daily newspaper editor has criticised police after details about a sex attacker on the loose were withheld from the press and public.

Murray Foote, editor of the Daily Record, has accused Police Scotland of “putting up shutters” after the force refused to release any details of an offender who has been on the run for a month.

The Glasgow-based Record splashed on the police’s lack of cooperation in Monday’s edition, pictured below.

However, the force has insisted it is safer to keep details secret and won’t even say if the offender is high-risk.

Murray told HTFP: “Our front page treatment was motivated by a growing concern about the lack of information being made available to the public by Police Scotland.

“In this latest case we felt there was particular justification as there could well be an issue of public safety posed by the individual in question being at large.

“The fact that the police were not even willing to give media guidance, let alone add any relevant information, added to our concern.”

The hunt has been going on across the UK for the offender, who disappeared from his home – believed to be in the Strathclyde area – in February.

Last year the Record revealed how Police Scotland stayed silent when Mark Hudgell, a paedophile with links to Edinburgh, vanished in Lincolnshire.

English police went public but even though the hunt headed north, Scots were not told .

Murray added: “Yesterday’s story is one in an ever-lengthening list of what we see as a disconnect between those responsible for the running of, and governance of, our police and the public they are there to serve.

“We don’t believe it’s a healthy situation for a police force to adopt what appears to us a default position of putting up shutters. Our concern as a media organisation has been echoed by several serving officers to our journalists.

We do, however, believe in keeping people informed, warning them of potential danger and appealing for their assistance in combatting crime. And with or without the co-operation of Police Scotland, we’ll continue to do so.”

Police Scotland told the Record it would be “inappropriate” to comment on the issue.