Home Secretary David Blunkett and his Tory shadow Oliver Letwin are so desperate for media attention these days it wouldn't surprise me if they turned up at a music hall to perform "Me and My Shadow".

But with law and order such an emotive issue, it's hardly surprising that politicans see it as a vote winner.

Mr Blunkett is now promising to double the current sentence guidelines for murder and other violent crimes. I have criticised lenient judges in the past but I am uneasy about their powers being transferred to politicians.

I envisage a situation where, in the run up to a General Election, there is a particularly gruesome court case underway. Is there not a danger of brinkmanship with each party in turn promising a longer sentence on conviction?

The fact is that no two crimes are identical and therefore it is sensible for a judge who has heard all the evidence to have discretion when sentencing.

I'm sure that when judges do sentence they have one eye on a possible appeal. No judge likes to be told he got it wrong, so perhaps they may err on the side of caution.

However, I do feel that appeal courts should give more prominence to the actual time an offender will spend behind bars rather than the sentence. Everyone knows that three years really means 18 months and it's this smaller tariff that should be at the forefront of any sentencing body's mind.

Meanwhile, the Conservative Shadow Home Secretary Mr Letwin appears to be suggesting the police should devote more time to solving serious crimes, rather than low level offences.

I'm not sure I agree.

Someone doesn't just wake up one day and decide to become a house burglar or commit an armed robbery. They have spent years working their way up the criminal ladder starting with a bit of petty vandalism, theft from cars and shoplifting.

If you deter people from crime either through education or catching them young then serious crime will fall in the long run.

Instead of hunting for cheap headlines, I wish one senior politican at least would take up the challenge of reducing the massive burden the judicial system places on the public purse.

I've already spoken in this column of the desperate need for an overhaul of a system which sees lawyers claiming massive sums of money from legal aid for attending pre-trial hearings into issues which should have been resolved before matters ever reached the courts.

And there have been many cases which should never have been brought to court or, as with the royal butler trial, have cost the public purse millions of pounds before being kicked out.

Perhaps the spin doctors don't regard this issue as vote-catching as tough on crime cliches, but I do hope Mr Blunkett and Mr Letwin will consider how to clamp down on this continued legalised fleecing of the public purse.