Blair tells police to get tough

Tony Blair is to get tough with police today and order a big improvement in their clear-up rates in a drive to stop millions of criminals going unpunished.

The Prime Minister is to use a keynote speech in London to highlight worrying figures showing the rise in delays, blunders and inefficiency which blight the criminal justice system.

In particular, he will point to an Audit Commission report showing that, of 5.2 million criminal offences recorded last year, only 326,000 people were sentenced - - a success rate of only six per cent.

Much of the gap is accounted for by low levels of detection - and Mr Blair wants to see major improvements in solving cases. He views pursuing offenders as crucial in the fight against rising crime across Britain.

The Prime Minister's speech to a Metropolitan Police conference will be seized on as further evidence he has grabbed control of Whitehall's agenda for tackling lawlessness.

He and his officials are increasingly alarmed by rising street crime, which is likely to help send the overall level of recorded crime in England and Wales over the last year up six per cent when official figures are released by the Home Office next month.

Mr Blair's tactic of highlighting poor detection figures also lays himself open to new political charges that his government has failed to get a grip on crime during its five years in power.

His decision to take on the police will be seen as politically risky, following Home Secretary David Blunkett's battle with rank-and-file officers over pay and conditions.

However, Mr Blair is pushing for reform at all levels of the criminal justice system, including lawyers. Yesterday the new minister in charging of overhauling it, Lord Falconer, admitted that many lawyers cynically manipulate the system for their own ends.

In a carefully timed prelude to Mr Blair's speech, Lord Falconer said far too many offenders simply slipped through the net while defendants granted bail went straight out and reoffended.

The Prime Minister is expected to order a shake-up so the needs of witnesses and victims become paramount.

A White Paper pointing the way forward is expected next month and the Government is ready for a fierce confrontation with barristers and civil liberty groups.

The document is expected to propose a formal system of plea-bargaining and to allow retrials when new evidence emerges in murder and other serious crimes.

More controversial will be moves to allow previous convictions to be disclosed to juries and stopping jury trials altogether in complex fraud trials and other whitecollar offences.

Instead, a professional tribunal of judges and lay assessors will hear cases while the middle classes, many of whom routinely try to avoid jury service, are to be targeted in the White Paper which will remove a number of exemptions.

Thousands more cases will be removed from trial by jury by boosting the sentencing powers of magistrates from their current limit of six months to one year.