A CONVICTED cocaine dealer has swapped porridge for mince pies by dressing up as Father Christmas.

John Tams donned a beard and boots to thrill kids visiting a Christmas grotto he built with fellow prisoners at a Middlesbrough cafe.

The father-of-four, who has served 14 months of a five-and-a-half year jail term for dealing drugs, said he wanted to give something back to the community.

But Euro MP Martin Callanan said that releasing Tams from prison so soon after sentence made a mockery of British justice.

For the past six months, Tams has been working at The Royal Cafe, in Port Clarence, as part of his day release programme from Kirklevington Grange prison, at Yarm, near Stockton.

Tams, who worked as a market trader on a carpet stall in Newcastle, said: "I decided we should build the grotto because all the young mums come in here every day with their little ones and we wanted to make it more Christmassy for them."

But Mr Callanan, Conservative Euro MP for the North-East, said he could not believe Tams had been released so soon.

He said: "It is admirable that Mr Tams is doing this and I applaud his efforts to rehabilitate himself in the community, but how on earth can he get a 69-month sentence for dealing cocaine and be on day release after having served just one year?"

Cafe manager and mother-of-five Karen Evans, 38, of Billingham, said she and her customers loved what Tams had done.

A Home Office spokesman said any prisoner allowed on day release had been thoroughly risk-assessed.