NICK CLEGG will today call for convicted rioters to face their victims in person and be "put to work" to clean up the damage they have caused to society.

In an echo of the tough stance taken by David Cameron, the Liberal Democrat Deputy Prime Minister will this morning use a speech to demand restorative justice for the victims of the law-breakers, urging the courts to dispense "punishment that sticks".

His call comes amid a general breakdown in the fragile political consensus between the Coalition Government and the Labour Opposition on how to respond to the riots across English cities.

It also follows a demand yesterday from Boris Johnson, the Conservative Mayor of London, for every convicted rioter to be forced to make a personal apology to victims of their violence.

It is understood the Ministry of Justice will be instructing probation officers in England to recommend so-called Community Payback sentences in non-custodial cases to be served in riot-hit areas.

Last night, Ed Miliband, who has been calling for an independent inquiry into the riots, claimed that following meetings with Coalition ministers, the UK Government was "thankfully moving towards the kind of thing I would like to see – a genuine commission of inquiry".

Today, Mr Clegg will insist crime and lawlessness deprive ordinary, decent folk of their freedom, while violence and disorder are an attack on liberty and on the ability of individuals to live and work peacefully in their own communities.

"I am passionately convinced that swift, strong justice needs to be done when people break the laws and moral rules of society," Mr Clegg will say during a speech in Whitehall.

"Victims of crime are only truly protected if punishment leads to criminals not committing crime again. Criminals must be punished and then made to change their ways.

"That's why those people who behaved so despicably last week should have to look their victims in the eye.

"They should have to see for themselves the consequences of their actions and they should be put to work cleaning up the damage and destruction they have caused so they don't do it again."

At his press conference, the LibDem leader is likely to come under pressure over ministerial consideration of cutting looters' benefits, given that some within his party believe that such a move would be wrong and simplistic.

Mr Cameron and Mr Miliband have clashed on how to respond to the riots, ending the delicate unity that had existed in the early aftermath of last week's violence. In what was billed as a "fightback" address at a youth centre in his Oxfordshire constituency, the PM insisted that neither the Coalition's cutbacks nor race or poverty were at the root of the violence, saying that although there had been local factors in the riots, in large parts of the country this was "just pure criminality".

He pledged to tackle what he called Britain's "slow motion moral collapse" and argued the riots were about "people showing indifference to right and wrong, people with a twisted moral code, people with a complete absence of self-restraint".

Facing calls for the Coalition to rethink its cuts on police numbers south of the Border from, among others, the Police Federation, the Prime Minister stuck by the policy, insisting the planned reforms would cut red tape and allow a greater "police presence" on the streets.

Today, Theresa May, the Home Secretary, will give more details about the Government's plans for electing police commissioners across England.

Mr Cameron said his ministers would be reviewing policies across all departments for mending the "broken society", ranging from education to health-and-safety rules.

He also declared an "all-out war on gangs and gang culture" and suggested the voluntary national citizen service for all 16-year-olds would be extended, although the Scottish Government has set its face against the scheme, insisting it already has its own volunteer programme.

In a speech to his old comprehensive school in London, Mr Miliband urged the Government not to follow an "easy and predictable path" by blaming the riots on criminality "pure and simple".