Tighter curbs on the granting of bail to suspects in murder cases and other crimes is called for in a report being considered by ministers, The Times has learnt.

The report, with the Home and Justice Secretaries, is expected to condemn a “culture of tolerance” within the criminal justice system towards repeated offending by suspects released on bail.

Courts and the police are too ready to grant bail – even when bail conditions have been broken or offending has taken place on bail, it found.

Bail conditions are also regularly flouted with impunity: when a suspect is arrested for a breach of a bail condition, the chances are that he or she will simply be bailed again.

It will call for much closer scrutiny of a suspect’s record and circumstances when bail is sought, and much tighter conditions being attached to bail – including regular checks on whether those conditions are complied with.

The report was drawn up after the stabbing of Richard Whelan, 28, in July 2005 by Anthony Joseph, 23, on the top of a bus – eight hours after Joseph had been released in error from custody.

But since then, the issue of suspects being wrongly released on bail has arisen again with the case of Garry Weddell, the policeman who killed his mother-in-law while on bail awaiting trial accused of strangling his wife, Sandra. He then shot himself.

Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, and Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, with Vera Baird, QC, the Solicitor-General, commissioned an inquiry from the four chief inspectors of the Crown Prosecution Service, court administration, constabulary and from prisons to ensure that “mistakes that may have occurred do not happen again”.

Joseph stabbed Mr Whelan seven times after the latter remonstrated with him for throwing chips at this girlfriend.

It later emerged that Joseph, who pleaded guilty to manslaughter due to diminished responsibility, had been mistakenly released from a young offender’s institution shortly before.

Because of a separate arrest warrant, issued after he failed to attend court in Liverpool, four weeks before the killing, on charges of burglary, he should have been retained in custody. The Government admitted that there had been catastrophic “failings” throughout the entire criminal justice system that had allowed Joseph to kill when he should have been in custody.

The errors are thought to stem from a failure to upload Joseph’s details on to the National Police Computer.

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