Today’s big Lib Dem policy is an extra £300m a year for the police over the next Parliament.
Under Theresa May at the Home Office, and now as Prime Minister, the police have suffered over £2.2 billion worth of cuts in real terms. This represents a 22% real terms reduction.
As of 31 March 2016 the total strength of the 43 police forces in England & Wales reached just over 124,000 FTE officers. This is the lowest number of police officers recorded under the current strength measure.
Commenting on the announcement Lib Dem Home Affairs spokesperson, and former Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan police, Brian Paddick said:
This commitment, to an extra £300m a year over the next Parliament for the police, is essential. Our police officers work tirelessly to keep us safe but under Theresa May they’ve had their hands tied behind their backs.
Police visibility on our streets is key to reassuring communities, preventing crime and gathering intelligence. Conservative cuts meant that last year violent crimes actually increased, reversing a normally declining trend.
For example, 13 people have been killed on London’s streets in the past three weeks as the capital faces a deadly knife crime epidemic.
This money can support community policing, which reassures young people that they don’t need to carry knives, deters them from carrying knives and with the help of communities, can take knives off our streets.
Only the Liberal Democrats have a plan to reverse the increase in violent crime, boost community confidence and increase the flow of community intelligence.
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings
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5 Comments
This is very good and what we need to do is promote it, getting good coverage is worse than ever !
The Tories have Amber Rudd, Home Secretary,who tries to defend the government’s poor record on recent NHS cyber security.
The Labour party have Diane Abbot , who tries to remember figures and facts on policy, and sounds a really inept possibility as a Home Secretary.
We have a former innovative senior police chief, as our potential Home Secretary, a man who has been in harms way and in real leadership, and are on ten percent in some polls!
Britain, awake, please !
A good policy which, sadly won’t get any media coverage….
The media, including the BBC (with Laura Kuenssberg as political editor), seem obsessed with spinning Tory policies and ignoring their past history on every new ‘promise they make…
How interviewers can, with a straight face, accept May’s nonsense on the NHS, worker’ rights, council homes, police/nurse numbers, immigration, etc., etc., is completely beyond me….
This election is being run along ‘Trump lines’. An election where alternate facts are accepted by so called journalists and an compliant public….
The UK is sleepwalking into a 5 year future such that, when historians look back, the main question will be, “HOW?”
I always find Laura Kuenssberg to be very well informed and impartial.
It’s the Dimblebys I can’t stand. Pompous and self important forever interrupting. They certainly gave ukip too much air time.
Expats. You seem to forget the mendacious impact of the non Dom expat owned right wing tabloid press.
David Raw 16th May ’17 – 8:48am……I always find Laura Kuenssberg to be very well informed and impartial….
Sarcasm, no doubt?
Her reporting bias against Corbyn/Labour includes selective use of facts, inaccurate facts and and actual misquotes,..(Laura Kuenssberg report on Jeremy Corbyn inaccurate, says BBC Trust)…
To me the height of bias was her reporting of the May/Hammond U-turn on the NI pledge promise…She mentioned the U-turn in her opening sentence and then spent the rest of the report lambasting Corbyn for be a weak opposition leader in allowing May to escape relatively unscathed at PMQs….