A FLAGSHIP Government scheme to slash the benefit of criminals who skip community service is costing taxpayers a fortune, it was revealed last night.

Red tape and administrative costs mean the scheme is costing ratepayers £1,340 for every £100 of benefit withdrawn from criminals.

The revelation will come as a big setback to ministers who hoped a pilot scheme on Teesside would be adopted nationwide.

They decided to act after Home Office research showed that 35,000 out of 130,000 sentences handed out each year - one in four - were breached.

Ministers boldly claimed the scheme would toughen up community service, which had been seen as a "soft option" for criminals anxious to avoid jail. But six months later the benefit clampdown looks more like a costly embarrassment.

The scheme is being tried out on Teesside and in three other areas of the UK - Hertfordshire, Derbyshire and the West Midlands.

A total of 39 individuals across the UK have been stripped of their benefits in the first six months of the experiment at a cost to the taxpayer of more than £52,200.

For every £100 of benefit withdrawn, the administrative costs to the taxpayer - including preparation of the court case - are approximately £1,340.

Last night, the Government faced calls to think again.

Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland Labour MP Ashok Kumar said: "Obviously this is a disturbing situation.

"We want to see effective crime fighting, but there has to be value for money in that, and I will be writing to Alistair Darling, Social Security Minister, to ask whether he will be looking at this anomaly."

There is concern the bill to taxpayers could soar even more if the Government presses ahead with plans to strip parents of young tearaways and truants of their child benefit.

Stephen Smailes, leader of the Conservative opposition group on Stockton Borough Council, said: "If they continue down that road I will be calling for a public inquiry.

"You can't have a system that is costing the taxpayer more than it is criminals."

He added: "This is yet another example of the Government going for a headline without thinking the scheme through."

Norman Brennan, of the Victims of Crime Trust, said: "My message is: Get yourselves back to the drawing board and do something to address real issues - instead of coming up with gimmicks."

Harry Fletcher, of Napo, the probation officers' union, said the cost to the taxpayers was "extortionate" and withdrawal of benefits would only encourage crime.

He said: "We think it's a flawed system. If you take benefit away from people who are out of work, their only alternative is to beg, steal or borrow. The most likely option is to steal."

A spokesman for the Department of Work and Pensions said: "The benefit sanctions we are piloting send out a message that the right to benefits must be matched by the responsibility to comply with the community sentence handed out by the courts.

"Success will be judged by the deterrent effect on those who might otherwise have broken their community service order during the pilot exercise."

He added: "Enforcing sanctions does cost money, but it is money well worth spending if it will result in people meeting their responsibility to do what the court says."

Stockton South MP Dari Taylor, who taught in a detention centre in the 1970s, said the cost of locking up all offenders would be a far greater burden on the taxpayer than the administrative costs involved in depriving a minority of transgressors of their benefit.