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"It is of crucial importance to public safety that they are given the kind of information on outcomes which can improve their future decision-making."

Mr Leigh said there needed to be more information about how well HDC helped the rehabilitation of prisoners to ensure public confidence in the scheme is maintained.

The report found that £200,000 a year was being spent by the authorities doing assessments at the homes of criminals who were, in fact, ineligible to take part in HDC scheme.

This had taken up "valuable resources" and given false hope to prisoners and their families, it said.

Two prisoners received £8,100 from the Home Office because it could not be proved whether they had deliberately damaged monitoring equipment.

One prisoner received £5,400 for being returned to jail and another received £2,700, because the equipment had not been retained for examination during appeals.

Gerry Sutcliffe, prisons minister, defended HDC and insisted the public protection was the guiding principle behind whether or not people were released under the scheme.

He added: "Of the 130,000 low-risk offenders who have been released on Home Detention Curfew since its inception in January 1999, less than 4 per cent have re-offended.

"This compares with a figure of 67.4 per cent re-offending rate for all prisoners released from prison within two years. We are not complacent, however, and any offence committed is one too many."

David Davis, Shadow Home Secretary, said: "This report raises serious issues about the way tagging is being used. With so many serious offences being committed it is clear the Government is showing a shocking disregard for public safety.

"It is disgraceful that this Government is happy to put people who are clearly unsuitable for tagging right at the heart of our communities resulting in over 1000 violent offences including five deaths."

"While tagging may have a useful role to play it is vitally dependent on careful selection of the people who are tagged. If it is merely used as a means for the Government to combat their prison overcrowding crisis no one wins: the victim gets no justice, the public get no protection, the offender gets no rehabilitation and the whole scheme is undermined."

Nick Clegg, Liberal Democrat Home Affairs Spokesman, supported tagging as a way of ensuring low level offenders and those at the end of their sentences are kept under surveillance.

But he said: "Dealing with offenders means it is vital that we get tagging right. Once again, flaws in the system can be laid squarely at the Government's feet for failing to implement the system competently in practice

There are currently 2,535 prisoners on home detention curfew compared with 3,264 a year ago.

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