Police should be given the power to dole out on-the-spot fines to drunken louts, according to Prime Minister Tony Blair.

The fines, which could be as much as �100, would be used to deter drunken and anti-social behaviour.

On crime, I have no hesitation about being very hard on it

Tony Blair

Mr Blair, speaking in Germany, also highlighted the shame he felt at the drunken behaviour of English football supporters during the Euro 2000 tournament.

The Conservatives have already dismissed the idea as a 'gimmick' while civil rights campaigners say it goes too far.

Mr Blair said he hoped on-the-spot fines would help cut the problem of late-night drunkeness in towns and cities.

"A thug might think twice about kicking your gate, throwing traffic cones around your street, or hurling abuse into the night sky if he thought he might get picked up by the police, taken to a cashpoint and asked to pay an on-the-spot fine of, for example, �100," he said.

Mr Blair's speech to the Global Ethics Foundation in Tubingen, Germany, comes after Home Secretary Jack Straw called for local authorities to make more use of their powers to crack down on anti-social behaviour.

Crime summit

He went on: "If the police want that power - and I believe they will, and the public will support it - they should get that power."

What you are actually asking the police force to do is to monitor social behaviour - it is Orwellian in its concept.

Michael Mansfield QC

The prime minister said he would raise the issue with senior police officers attending a crime summit in Downing Street on Monday.

Spelling out his own personal feelings about crime, Mr Blair said: "On crime, I have no hesitation about being very hard on it.

"It's not just that the vulnerable suffer most from crime. It is that it breaks the covenant between citizens."

Hooligans

Mr Blair told his audience: "You will know, sadly, shamefully for us, that we, like other countries, have a problem with football hooliganism ... but it is not just about football.

"Bizarrely, as the law stands, the police have the power in Britain to levy on-the-spot fines for cycling on pavements and dog fouling.

"And yet they have to deal with drunks who get offensive and loutish and often can do nothing about it without a long, expensive process through the police station, the courts and beyond."

But barrister and civil rights campaigner Michael Mansfield QC said he was "very concerned" at the idea.

Orwellian concept

"What you are actually asking the police force to do is to monitor social behaviour - it is Orwellian in its concept.

"What is going to constitute anti-social behaviour? How is a bobby on the beat going to weigh up whether it's one traffic cone or two traffic cones [being thrown] ... the whole thing is a nonsense."

While Conservative home affairs spokesman David Lidington told the BBC: "I hope its not just another gimmick because to enforce this you are actually going to need policemen out on the streets and of course we are very short of them at the moment."

On Thursday the Conservative leader William Hague criticised the record of the Thatcher and Major governments on crime, saying they had not tackled the issue effectively.