Just six per cent of applications to scheme for 'too soft' sentencing result in ...

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Just six per cent of applications made to a Government scheme set up to tackle lenient sentences are actually resulting in stiffer punishments.

Analysis by The Mail on Sunday found 21 of 368 referral applications completed under the Unduly Lenient Sentence (ULS) scheme in the past six months were referred to the Court of Appeal and saw judges increase the sentence.

In 2017, 14 per cent of claims to the ULS project resulted in tougher sentences, according to the latest annual figures from the Attorney General’s office, which runs it.

Some victims are concerned that the scheme, launched in 1989 following public outcry over a series of controversial sentencing decisions, is being undermined by limitations on the crimes that it can consider.

A swathe of serious offences, including making and downloading child pornography images and causing death by careless driving, are exempt, and in the last six months, 153 complaints about sentencing were ruled ineligible.

One of them involved Jaiden Mangan, a three-year-old who was run down and killed on a pedestrian crossing by delivery driver Dean Phoenix in Dorset.