New Prime Minister Must Reverse Policing Cuts

THE new Prime Minister must ‘stand together’ with policing and reverse the deep cuts the service has endured over the past decade, according to Essex Police Federation.

Both Boris Johnson and Sajid Javid pledged to put 20,000 officers back on the streets as part of their Conservative Party leadership election manifestos. While Mr Javid is out of the race to succeed Theresa May, Mr Johnson is involved in a run-off with Jeremy Hunt.

Essex Police Federation Chairman Steve Taylor is pleased that the issue is being talked about but says that words must be put into action, whoever gets the top job.

He said: “We welcome the intimation that the number of police officers needs to grow.

“It’s a step in the right direction. It’s our job to try and hold them to those views. We don’t need convincing. We’ve seen the data. We’ve seen the physical effects that austerity has had on the service we’re trying to deliver.

“We need to make sure we hold the Prime Minister and their subsequent Government to account for those comments, and that we start to see that growth coming through.

“It would be nice to see the Prime Minister standing together with the police service in this country, listening to the police service that has been consistently saying ‘you’ve cut too deep’, and rectifying that and reversing some of that austerity-led cutting that we’ve seen.”

Putting 20,000 officers back on the streets would go some way to replacing the 21,500 officers lost to the service in England and Wales since Government austerity measures took hold in 2010.

The irony of the numbers being talked about is not lost on Steve.

“It would return us more to pre-austerity levels,” he said.

“It would be nice for that not to be not celebrated in terms of, ‘look at me, aren’t I great’, but acknowledged as, ‘yes, we did cut too deep, too fast, into police numbers – we accept that cuts do have consequences and our communities are living those consequences now, and as a reflection we’re going to reverse some of those cuts and return you to pre-austerity levels’.”