The chairman of the Sentencing Council has called on magistrates to send fewer ‘either way’ offences to the Crown court. The number of such cases reaching the Crown court rose from 310,000 in 2007 to 353,000 in 2010.

Lord Justice Leveson told the House of Commons Justice Committee last month that the Sentencing Council is recommending that magistrates do not take the prosecution case at its most extreme when deciding whether to hear cases.

‘I hope and believe that magistrates will be more prepared to accept jurisdiction,’ Leveson told MPs.

Leveson, who is currently leading the inquiry into regulation of the media, said he would like more to be done to improve public understanding of sentencing. Questioned on the approach to sentencing following the August riots, he stressed that neither the media nor the government had swayed sentencing decisions.

‘Political and other pronouncements about how the courts should sentence did not, as far as I understand it, drive a single sentence,’ he said.

He added that the Sentencing Council may in future look at creating fresh guidelines in relation to public disorder.