Tony Blair was today accused by a leading criminologist of using "sticking plaster" solutions to tackle public concerns about crime and insecurity.

Ian Loader, Professor of Criminology at Oxford University, said that the blizzard of ministerial statements on law and order seemed more like efforts to grab the headlines for electoral purposes than genuine attempts to address the problems of crime and disorder.

He warned that the Government’s "legislative hyperactivity" - which has resulted in more than 40 crime-related Acts of Parliament since 1997 - risked making it more difficult for the Home Office to deliver results on the ground.

Professor Loader was one of a panel of experts who wrote to the Prime Minister ahead of a major speech on law and order tomorrow, whose advice was today posted on the 10 Downing Street website.

He warned the PM against making sweeping changes to the criminal justice system on the basis of newspaper headlines suggesting that public confidence in the system was at crisis point.

Government cannot allow itself to become "an uncritical cipher for public anger" over crime, said Professor Loader.

Although many people were anxious about crime because of a sense that the modern world generally is growing more insecure, these concerns could not be dealt with by declarations that the law would be made tougher.

"One isn’t going to tackle the problem you have identified with a Prime Ministerial statement on, and yet more legislation about, the criminal justice system," said Professor Loader.

"It is like putting a plaster on a broken leg." He warned that much government activity on law and order "seems to have more to do with the imperatives of electoral competition than a serious effort to address problems of crime and disorder".

He added: "It may even be - as the Home Office has found to its cost in recent weeks - that the dizzying pace of new initiatives has made it more difficult to keep one’s eye on the ball of sound administration and delivering programmes that stand some chance of achieving positive results on the ground.

"So I guess my suggestion is this: think hard before deciding that what our society needs right now is another grand statement of governmental purpose and a further round of headline-grabbing legislation."

Commenting on Professor Loader’s advice, David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, said: "These comments are a telling indictment of the Government’s strategy over the last nine years.

"They reinforce the concerns we have raised over the tidal wave of legislation, regulation and initiatives that have overwhelmed the Home Office and indeed the systems of Criminal Justice and immigration control.

"Far from announcing new reviews, more laws and even more initiatives the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary would do well to buckle down to the serious business of Government and to get a grip on the burgeoning bureaucracy that they have fostered, in order to deliver a long overdue improvement in public safety."

The Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Nick Clegg said: "These criticisms confirm the increasingly widespread view that the Government conducts policy by gimmicks, instead of according to evidence.

"The Government’s feverish battle to sound tough in the newspapers doesn’t solve our crime problems - it makes them worse. "It is not too late for Mr Blair to take these criticisms seriously, pay attention to the experts, and move to policies that actually work."

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