UK ministers are to introduce a new law allowing police and security services to extend their monitoring of the public's email and social media communications, the Home Office has confirmed, according to The Guardian.

It is expected that the new system will allow security officials to scrutinize who is talking to whom and exactly when the conversations are taking place, but not the content of messages.

Labor tried to introduce a similar system using a central database tracking all phone, text, email and internet use but that was ditched in 2009. It followed concerns raised by internet service providers and mobile phone operators over the project's feasibility, and anxieties over who would foot the bill.

"It is vital that police and security services are able to obtain communications data in certain circumstances to investigate serious crime and terrorism and to protect the public," said a Home Office spokesman, who said the plans would be brought forward "as soon as parliamentary time allows".

"We need to take action to maintain the continued availability of communications data as technology changes. Communications data includes time, duration and dialling numbers of a phone call, or an email address. It does not include the content of any phone call or email and it is not the intention of government to make changes to the existing legal basis for the interception of communications."

Civil liberties campaigners have strongly criticized the revival of the plan because of the risk it could breach the privacy of law-abiding Britons.