LONDON — Rioters and looters convicted following the violent unrest that convulsed Britain this month will wear orange jumpsuits and help clean up areas affected by their actions, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said Tuesday, as part of a “riot payback scheme.”

Mr. Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrat Party, the junior partner in the coalition government, also announced an “independent communities and victims panel” to examine the causes of the widespread violence, burning and looting that left scars across London and several other major cities. “It won’t be a public inquiry, it won’t be established under the Inquiries Act, but it will serve as a way in which victims and communities can have their voice heard,” he said at a news conference.

The measures have been widely seen here as a compromise between Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservative Party, pushing a tough law-and-order response, and the opposition Labour Party, under Ed Miliband, which has urged the government to concentrate on the root causes of the unrest and declare a wider, judge-led public inquiry with the power to call witnesses.

There was growing discord, however, over harsh sentences handed down to convicted rioters. Last week a 23-year-old engineering student with no previous convictions was sentenced to six months in prison for looting $5 worth of bottled water. On Tuesday, two young men from the outskirts of Manchester were each given four years in prison for inciting others to riot via Facebook postings. The Guardian newspaper reported that the postings by the defendants, Jordan Blackshaw, 20, and Perry Sutcliffe, 22, did not in fact lead to any violence.