A pair of "predatory paedophiles" who are serving life sentences for murder have launched a court action to have their phone calls to each other restored.

Charles O'Neill and William Lauchlan are housed in different jails in Scotland and kept in contact by phone until authorities stopped it last year.

Following a decision by Scottish Ministers to refuse a request to reinstate the phone calls between them, the pair have now raised a judicial review at the Court of Session in Edinburgh challenging the ruling.

They claim that the ministers, who are responsible for the Scottish Prison Service, have breached their human rights.

In the action they are seeking to have the decision overturned and to be treated as "near relatives". Persons in that category are permitted calls.

O'Neill, 56, and Lauchlan, 43, said they wish to have contact with each other and maintain: "They have as close a family life as they can have subject to the restrictions of imprisonment."

O'Neill was ordered to serve a minimum of 30 years in prison and Lauchlan must spend 26 years in jail before he can seek parole after they were convicted in 2010 of the murder of Allison McGarrigle.

Mrs McGarrigle, 39, formerly of Rothesay, Isle of Bute, had threatened to go to the police over their sexual abuse of a child.

She was murdered and her body dumped in the Firth of Clyde off Largs, in Ayrshire, in 1997.

McLauchlan and O'Neill were also convicted of a catalogue of sexual abuse of boys in a separate trial.

The trial judge, Lord Pentland, said: "It is clear that you are both dangerous and determined predatory paedophiles and that you represent a high risk to the safety of the public."

He described the pair as "highly ruthless and unrepentant individuals".

O'Neill and Lauchlan have previously gone to the Court of Session claiming that their human rights were being violated in the Scottish prison system because they were denied visits to each other.

In 2015, Lord Stewart rejected their action ruling that they did not merit the protection of the family life provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

The Scottish Ministers are contesting the latest action raised by the pair and a hearing was due to take place to consider whether it was time-barred.

However, David Leighton, counsel for Lauchlan, successfully moved to adjourn the case until February.

He said that Lauchlan only obtained legal aid permission for the proceedings on Wednesday and as yet O'Neill does not have legal aid.

The judge, Lord Brailsford, said it would allow time for the parties to make adjustments to pleadings.