Chief's blistering attack on law

A deeply damaging split between Britain's police chiefs and the Government was laid bare today as the head of Scotland Yard launched a blistering attack on the criminal justice system.

Metropolitan Commissioner Sir John Stevens intensified the war of words over law and order, branding the courts "appalling" and claiming that serious violent offenders are freed on bail to roam the streets "arrogant, untouchable, fearless and ready for anything".

His attack on courts, lawyers and gaps in the Government's law reforms has left ministers desperately trying to salvage the credibility of their secondterm agenda for modernising Britain's public services.

And Sir John's withering critique will be seen as clear retaliation against Home Secretary David Blunkett who began the row last month when he used an Evening Standard interview to warn the Met it must sort out violent crime or face takeover in failing boroughs.

The unprecedented attack from Britain's top policeman exposes the rift which has opened up between police and the Government on the day that Prime Minister Tony Blair makes a high profile bid to woo disenchanted public servants.

The Prime Minister was today sending a personal message to 10,000 key staff in hospitals schools and the police in a pamphlet explaining his case for reform. But with rank and file police already preparing for a major show of anti-Government feeling with a march through Westminster next Wednesday, David Blunkett's hopes of buying them off with thousands of extra recruits could be destroyed as Chancellor Gordon Brown refuses to finance Home Office spending plans.

While other big-spending departments have got their proposals in on schedule, Mr Blunkett is said to have asked for extra time to raise the quality of his bid for cash.

Speaking as he flew back to Britain from the Commonwealth summit in Australia, Mr Blair conceded that his personal intervention on public services was "a recognition that, yes, we need to do more to get across the programme of change".

And nowhere is the rift between Government and public servants more exposed than at the top of the police service, where the head of Scotland Yard and Sir David Phillips, the president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, are privately deeply irritated at the confrontational style of Mr Blunkett.

The two most senior police officers in Britain were strong supporters of the reform package. But they see the Home Secretary's warning that he is prepared to step in on operation policing matters as "unconstitutional" and are furious that he has publicly turned on them.

Mr Blunkett began the row when he used the Evening Standard interview on street robbery to warn he was prepared to intervene in cases of police "incompetence and incapability".

In his lecture at Leicester University last night, Sir John claimed police, victims and witnesses were treated with " utter contempt" by the "appalling" criminal justice system.

He singled out judges and magistrates for freeing robbers on bail, attacked lawyers for turning the criminal process into a game and highlighted gaps in the Government's programme of legislation.

He said: "The process actually encourages criminals in the belief that crime is merely a game of no consequence to society, local communities or their victims so that they are not held to account. So we see robbers with strings of previous convictions, strutting across the estates of inner London, having won their most recent game in court - arrogant, untouchable, fearless and ready for anything. It is not uncommon to have muggers released on bail eight or nine times before they face trial for their first attack. You could be forgiven for thinking that the criminal justice system is treating violent and abusive robbers like shoplifters."

But Sir John's words will be seen as an attempt to deflect criticism from police at a time when detection rates are at an all-time low. Scotland Yard caught suspects for only 15 per cent of all recorded crimes in 2000-01 and in some boroughs they made arrests in barely one in five cases of street robbery. Courts are now jailing more people than at any time for 40 years, average sentences have got longer and yesterday, the jail population in England and Wales topped 70,000 for the first time.