THE Attorney-General has called for tougher jail terms for paedophiles after figures showed that more than 200 judges have handed out sentences that were too lenient.

Lord Goldsmith, QC, the Government’s senior law officer, has asked the Sentencing Guidelines Council to consider current levels of sentencing in child abuse cases because of concern that penalties are too low. He has listed details of 339 cases in the past three years in which he has brought challenges over “unduly lenient” sentences. The figures, first revealed by The Times under the Freedom of Information Act, show that three quarters were agreed by the Court of Appeal to be too lenient.

Among the list of more than 200 judges, about one in ten of the senior judiciary, is Stuart Fish, who retired last year. Ten of his judgments were found to be unduly lenient by the Court of Appeal. One of his most controversial was in July 2005 when he allowed a man who attempted to rape a three-year-old girl to walk free after the accused said that he was “experimenting” and “got carried away”. The appeal court jailed him for 3½ years.

One of the biggest sentence increases involved Judge Robert Winstanley, who sentenced Luan Plakici, 26, an Albanian, to ten years for smuggling kidnapped women into Britain and forcing them to become sex slaves. The sentence was more than doubled to 23 years by the Court of Appeal.

Michelle Elliot, the director of Kidscape, the children’s charity, said: “I have been astonished by some of the lenient sentences with child pornography and sex abuse. Any judge who repeatedly gives lenient sentences to paedophiles should be off the bench.”

Another judge on the list is Adrian Smith, who was found to have been unduly lenient to a 53-year-old man who raped and sexually abused his daughter hundreds of times. The daughter conceived two children, one of whom survived. Last year the Court of Appeal doubled the judge’s initial jail sentence of five years to ten.

Lord Goldsmith lodged an appeal in 2002 over the level of sentences in the case of abuse of young children. But he believes that renewed action should be taken. Sentencing levels had improved, but not enough. He would prefer to see “higher sentences in this field”.

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