A big thumbs up to my colleague Dominic Grieve, the Attorney General, this morning.

Back in January, Adam Khan Ahmadzai, from Feltham in west London, was jailed for 48 months for violent disorder, robbery, burglary and criminal damage committed in Croydon during last August's riots. He led an attack on a police line; robbed a bus driver; robbed the owners of a shop; repeatedly attacked and robbed a terrified man at a cash machine; used weapons including a hammer, a brick and a metal pole; and led a gang into a supermarket which he then looted and vandalised before looting a betting shop.

If the Attorney General feels a sentence isn't tough enough he is allowed to refer the case to the Court of Appeal and that is exactly what Dominic did in this case. As a result, Mr Ahmadzai's sentence has been increased by three years.

I have repeatedly argued that the courts need to send out a clear signal that what happened in Croydon on 8th August was completely unacceptable and - thanks to Dominic's intervention - that is what the courts have now done in this case.