Labour attacks Government over ‘reckless’ £400m police cuts
1 min read
Labour has slammed the Government over its claim to have protected police budgets, after new figures revealed £413m in cuts to forces.
Independent research by the Commons showed that in the year 2015/16, forces received £7,620,644,880, but the sum was cut to £7,207,494,919 for 2017/18.
Shadow Policing Minister Louise Haigh MP told the Daily Mirror: “Ministers have been caught red-handed. These reckless cuts are a threat to public safety.”
Former Metropolitan Police Detective Chief Inspector Peter Kirkham said the cutbacks had proved the Tories were the “party of crime and disorder”.
He said: “It’s no surprise to me that a cut to police funding has been confirmed.
“Response times are longer as fewer officers cover wider areas and so opportunities to catch offenders are lost. Warnings of the consequences were dismissed as scaremongering.
“But we were not crying wolf. We were accurately predicting the consequences of the cuts and everything we said has come true.”
The paper said the Government did not deny the accuracy of the figures, but say the Home Office still insisted “it has protected overall police spending in real terms”.
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