A RETIRING judge has slammed government "mismanagement" of the courts.

Judge David Bryant accused the Treasury of "constant micro-mismanagement", waste and inefficiency.

He called for a halt to continual changes in the law by Home Secretaries, which he said sometimes created "a recipe for muddle".

He suggested that criminals be set to work cleaning roads, with their offender status on public display.

And he stepped into the Location, Location, Location debacle, sticking up for Teesside, where he sits as a judge.

He said: "The real bugbear of the justice system is that we have constant micro-mismanagement at the behest of the Treasury.

"Much of what they do results in waste and inefficiency rather than improvements and savings and efficiency.

"They will do something which causes money to be saved from one part of the public purse, but actually costs more to another part.

"The Treasury should stick to what it knows about. Unfortunately, increasingly it doesn't."

He said criminal law was often altered for no sensible reason, as a "matter of fashion" and to "pointless" effect.

"They don't give legislation time to bed down.

"Home Secretaries get bees in their bonnets. They think that if they produce new legislation people may be deceived into thinking they're doing something useful.

"The best way to change it is by not changing it for a bit. Just let it have a chance to work."

At his farewell ceremony, as a member of the Teesside Probation Board, he spoke out against changes to the Probation Service.

He said Teesside was one of the best-performing areas, but a system that worked well was being dismantled for "no good reason".

In response to the judge's comments, a Treasury spokesperson said: "We are at the heart of efforts to improve the quality, cost-effectiveness and efficiency of public services."

A CPS spokesperson said it was assessed by independent inspectors as achieving a good standard in the handling of its casework and service offered to victims and witnesses.