YOBS and drunks who plague Britain's towns and cities will be hit with £100 on-the-spot fines, Tony Blair announced today.

The Prime Minister declared war on the louts who roam the streets, particularly on Friday and Saturday nights.

He said: "A thug might think twice about kicking in 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.

"If the police want to have the power, they should get that power."

The Prime Minister is to meet senior policemen to discuss the idea on Monday.

He added: "I want to put to them the idea that their officers get the power to levy on-the-spot fines for drunken, noisy, loutish and anti-social behaviour. Obviously, where real violence and serious criminal intent is involved, the courts must remain the only option.

"But I am talking about dealing with nuisance drunken behaviour."

But the proposal has been met with a lukewarm response from York police.

"On principle it is a great idea," said PC Dave Boag, a police licensing officer for York.

"But it is impractical. We don't use on-the-spot fines in this country, the nearest we have is issuing a summons after taking down details.

"We employ this policy for urinating in the street and it would be useful for drunks as well - but not on-the-spot."

He added that officers could not be expected to patrol Micklegate, York's notorious drinking area, carrying around cash they had taken from drunks.

"It would be a risk for officers to carry that much cash, and the drunks could pretend to have forgotten pin numbers or claim the next day they were duped."

As a general guideline, police officers do not currently interview drunken suspects on the night of their offence, preferring to wait until the morning to be sure that the suspect understands the procedures.

But Mr Blair said on-the-spot fines would avoid expensive arrest and court proceedings in many cases.

He emphasised Labour had already brought in measures to deal with noisy neighbours and anti-social behaviour.

Mr Blair's idea will reignite the war between Labour and the Conservatives over the quest for a tough policy on law and order.

The chairman of the Ryedale Crime Prevention Panel, Coun Geoff Rennie, said that the idea would provoke much discussion.

But he added that problems with drunken behaviour in the centres of Malton, Norton and Pickering had been largely dealt with by the introduction of CCTV cameras, which enabled the police to spot troublemakers and deal with them appropriately.

"I think if the Prime Minister wanted to give us something to help to run that, it would be very welcome," he added.