JOHN REID, the home secretary, is to announce proposals for keeping paedophiles, rapists and other violent criminals in jail for longer.

Eligibility for automatic parole halfway through a jail term will be ended. There is also pressure to rescind guidelines that force judges to reduce a sentence by a third for a guilty plea.

A Home Office consultation paper, to be published this week, aims to restore public confidence in the criminal justice system after controversy about lenient sentences and “soft” judges.

Under the plans, offenders released on licence will be more readily returned to jail if they reoffend or break their terms of early release.

Reid, Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general, and Lord Falconer, the lord chancellor, also agreed to make judges explain the sometimes complicated way they calculate jail terms.

Reid recently clashed with Goldsmith over the sentencing of Craig Sweeney, who sexually assaulted a three-year-old girl after kidnapping her from her home in south Wales. The judge gave him “life” imprisonment of 18 years but said he could be free on parole after five years and four months.

Reid demanded the sentence be referred to the Court of Appeal to be increased. But Goldsmith ruled no appeal was possible because the judge had followed the law. He started with a sentence of 18 years, in line with guidelines, and took off a third for the guilty plea, leaving 12 years. Sweeney would serve half this and the rest would be further cut because of time spent on remand.

The case crystallised public concern that dangerous criminals rarely serve their full sentences. The Home Office admitted that 53 lifers sentenced since 2000 had been released.

Falconer admitted to a Bar Council conference yesterday there was “general chaos” in parts of the criminal justice system, but hurriedly qualified his comments.

Under the planned changes, the discounts will still be available but ministers will give judges discretion to withhold them in serious cases. “This is all about improving public confidence in sentencing and bringing in a tougher regime to protect the public from the most dangerous offenders,” a senior Whitehall official said.

The Sentencing Guidelines Council is also suggesting an end to the automatic one-third discount for guilty pleas. At the moment criminals caught red-handed get the same discount as those who plead guilty for other reasons.

Goldsmith was particularly outraged by the case of Alan Webster, a paedophile who denied raping a 12- week-old baby. He changed his plea only when police confronted him with pictures he had taken of himself with his victim. He was still able to get a one-third reduction to his time in jail.

There will also be an end to the rule whereby judges increasing a sentence must give the prisoner a discount for the “trauma” of going through the case again.

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