GIVING criminals ever-harsher punishments is not the answer to tackling crime, says Hampshire MP Chris Huhne.

Mr Huhne, giving evidence to the Home Affairs select committee yesterday, said preventing and detecting crime was a far better way of reducing it. The Eastleigh MP and Liberal Democrat Home Affairs Spokesman argued that currently as few as one in 100 crimes in Britain ended with a conviction in a court of law.

He said: “[The Lib Dem] approach to cutting crime is relentlessly focused on what actually works. The debate we have seen between Labour and the Conservatives is always about the severity of punishment, when we know from the data that punishment is actually the least effective way of tackling crime, compared with prevention measures and detection.”

Mr Huhne said he supported early intervention to ensure children were not straying into crime, and backed the Government’s use of parenting orders and investment in Sure Start centres.

He added: “Britain has one of the highest prison populations, relative to the general population, in the world. We need to make sure prison is not the college of crime it has become, and at the moment we are not giving judges and magistrates an adequate menu of options for punishment.”