Serious repeat offenders to face life jail in Cameron crackdown

Promising that dangerous criminals “will be locked up for a very long time”, Mr Cameron threw out Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke’s “too lenient” plans to impose shorter sentences on offenders who plead guilty.

Threatening someone with a knife will carry a mandatory minimum jail term of six months, and foreign nationals serving indeterminate sentences will be deported sooner.

Mr Cameron suggested that “mandatory life sentences for the most serious repeat offenders” could be brought back and serious, sexual and violent offenders would only be released after serving two-thirds of their sentence, not at the half-way point as currently.

His intervention puts pressure on Mr Clarke, whose proposals for a “rehabilitation revolution” included cutting prison places by giving criminals 50 per cent discounts on their sentences for early guilty pleas.

Mr Clarke’s plans had been controversial, even leading to calls for his resignation, but changing them could prove costly as savings of £130m will have to be found elsewhere.

Fewer suspects on remand will be held in custody and deeper cuts to probation are expected, prompting fears that there will be too few officers to monitor criminals serving community orders.

Mr Clarke had hoped to reduce the prison population by 6,000, but the amended Bill would potentially save only 2,650 jail places.

Mr Cameron said the prison system was “failing and badly needs reform”, but he rejected a call from Richard Taylor, the father of murdered schoolboy Damilola Taylor, for Mr Clarke to be sacked.

He said Mr Clarke had a “hugely difficult job to do in trying to deliver more for less” and insisted that being prepared to “listen to what people say and come up with something better” was “a strength in politics, not a weakness, and certainly something Ken has no problems doing”.

Mr Clarke told MPs that he had hoped to introduce a “greater degree of judicial discretion” in an attempt to keep his plans, but added that the Government “could not make that work”.

He said community sentences would be made “tougher”, with longer curfews, a ban on overseas travel, and plans to seize items such as cars and TVs from offenders who fail to pay fines.

Other measures include making squatting a criminal offence and giving more rights to homeowners defending their property.

Full working weeks will be introduced in jails, while inmates working on licence in communities will be stripped of 40 per cent of their earnings in a move expected to raise £1m to help support victims of crime.

Five drug recovery wings in prisons will be piloted in Bristol, Holme House, Brixton, High Down and Manchester in an attempt to get more offenders off drugs and alcohol.

Spokeswoman Gemma Lousley of the Criminal Justice Alliance, which represents more than 50 criminal justice organisations, dismissed the “unhelpful tough-talking on crime”, saying that continuing to pour money into a bloated prison system whilst cutting funding to probation and community programmes was “a hopeless waste of resources”.

The director of the Howard League for Penal Reform, Frances Crook, also warned that the new proposals on knife possession were “worrying” as they would compromise judicial discretion.

“Given around 5,000 people are convicted of carrying knives each quarter, what constitutes using a knife to threaten will have to be very tightly defined to avoid prison numbers spiralling out of control,” she said.

Harry Fletcher, assistant general secretary of the probation officers’ union NAPO, said: “As a consequence of the U-turns further cuts to probation and the court system are inevitable.

“Probation programmes will be curtailed and there will not be enough staff to supervise individuals on orders. This will be disastrous and will lead to more use of custody and fewer community orders.

“In addition, more court cuts will lead to further delay, adjournments and inevitably more inconvenience for the public.”

Labour Shadow Justice Secretary Sadiq Khan said the Government’s policies on law and order were “in complete shambles”.

He said: “Asking those services that deliver rehabilitation and protection of the public to bear the brunt of the cuts to the justice system at the same time as keeping more offenders in the community is simply irresponsible.”

But former Tory Home Secretary Lord Howard said the Government had taken a “perfectly sensible” approach, and the crime reduction charity NACRO welcomed the reforms as a “once-in-a-generation opportunity” to focus on reducing reoffending, reducing crime and protecting victims.