There's certainly plenty of need for fresh ideas and lateral thinking on combating crime and making our court system more effective.

We have to come up with a system that deters wrongdoers from re-offending, doesn’t have us jailing more people than anywhere else in the world and at the same time leaves victims feeling that justice has been done.

Unfortunately, it’s difficult to see how the scheme put forward by Lib Dem councillor Roy Davies is going to achieve any of these aims.

Coun Davies, backed by Blackburn with Darwen’s Lib Dem leader, wants criminals to be able to pay fines for earlier release from jail.

He suggests, for example, that payment of a fine of £10,000 might in effect halve a six-month prison sentence.

He is wrong.

No thug should be able to buy his way out of prison time.

The punishment should fit the crime – and the wealth of the offender should have nothing to do with it.

Fortunes that are the proceeds of crime are already clawed back by police quite separately from the sentencing process.

Poor and rich alike should serve whatever jail time their offences warrant.