Commenting on Conservative calls for a mandatory 2 year sentence for people caught in possession of a knife, Liberal Democrat Justice Spokesman Robert Brown said:

“It is necessary to lock serious offenders up for the protection of the public - and possession of a knife in public is already rightly a serious crime for which people run a substantial risk of going to jail.

“However it is puerile playground politics for the Labour and Conservative Parties to be outbidding each other in this way in promising ever tougher fixed sentences. Anyone would think an election was imminent.

“The appropriate sentence in individual cases must be a matter for the courts, not politicians.

“Scottish jails are already stuffed full of more prisoners than any other country in Europe - and many of them have been convicted of knife crimes and other crimes of violence. Two thirds of them re-offend within 2 years of release. Prison is a hugely expensive way of making bad people worse.

“Taking away the discretion of judges, as Labour and the Tories seek to do, is entirely the wrong way to go about eradicating the scourge of knife crime.