Seven crimes are committed every day by electronically tagged offenders, according to a report.

The Government has been accused of wrongly using the scheme to ease prison overcrowding.

Just one in 40 tagged individuals committed a crime when the project started in 1999 but by last year the figure had jumped to one in nine, according to Tory MP Grant Shapps.

Mr Shapps, who obtained statistics by tabling Parliamentary questions, claims the figures show the Government is releasing unsuitable offenders early to relieve prison overcrowding.

But the new Ministry of Justice, which has responsibility for prisons, said the rise mainly reflected changes in the rules on tagging introduced four years ago.

Electronic tagging, officially known as the Home Detention Curfew (HDC) scheme, was launched in 1999. More than 137,000 prisoners have been released since.

Under the scheme, which has cost a total of £342 million, offenders are electronically tagged upon their release from jail and told to observe a curfew.

Originally, eligible prisoners could be released up to 60 days before the end of the custodial part of their sentences, but this limit was raised in 2003 to 135.

Mr Shapps, MP for Welwyn Hatfield, claimed the rise in re-offending by tagged prisoners could be partly linked to the pressure of a near-capacity prison population.

He said: "It's now very clear that the prison population crisis has led to thousands of additional crimes by prisoners who have been selected for electronic tagging and thereby released too early from prison.

"With our prisons once again expected to reach capacity later this month, the public will be rightly concerned to learn that, contrary to the initial Home Office findings, the Home Detention Curfew scheme is now failing both the prisoners and the general public who are exposed to increased risks of crime."