Murderers who plead guilty must spend longer in jail

The Lord Chief Justice today increased the time that murderers who plead guilty spend in jail.

Lord Woolf, the most senior judge in England and Wales, raised the life sentence tariff on bus driver Lee Holbrook, who killed teenager Alicia Eborne in November 2003, from 12 to 20 years.

The decision is one of five rulings on representative appeals involving defendants who have pleaded guilty to murder.

It follows the outcry which greeted the suggestion that judges should reduce sentences by one third for murderers who confess.

Instead, sentences in such cases will be cut by one sixth, with no reduction for killers given "whole life tariffs".