Police Minister Tony McNulty said Personal Digital Assistants or PDAs would ease perceived concerns over the amount of bureaucracy officers face in their duties.

Issuing fixed-penalty notices as part of summary justice was "perfectly fair", he added.

He was responding to a report in the Daily Mail newspaper that ticket machines would be issued to police to give fines to vandals and shoplifters.

The newspaper said the computers would allow officers to print an electronic receipt to give to an offender, rather than issue a fixed penalty, which would necessitate filling out a form explaining why the fixed penalty was issued.

Details of fines could be downloaded on to the station computer at the end of a shift, saving around an hour, according to the newspaper.

Mr McNulty said the story was "unfair" but added that police issued fixed-penalty notices already. He told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: "I have seen that and I think it is an unfair story. Yes, we do issue fixed penalty notices as part of summary justice, rather than clogging up entirely the criminal justice system. I think that is perfectly fair.

"At the same time, we are, because of everyone's concerns about bureaucracy, red tape and everything else, issuing the police with PDAs, hand-held computers, to do their work."

Asked if police would be able to give out a ticket in the same way as a traffic warden does, he said: "Well, they do now in the sense that many of the fixed penalty notices are issued simply by a physical ticket.

"Doing that by technology or otherwise helps speed up the process and is part of the wider context of police using hand-held computers, the digital transfer of information to help in the fight against bureaucracy, red tape and all the other things that people tell us we should get off the police's backs. It is a very mixed story."