Shadow policing minister Matt Vickers has launched a scathing attack on Labour's police recruitment plans, dismissing their pledge for 13,000 additional officers as "disastrous".
Speaking on GB News, Vickers contrasted Labour's proposal with the Conservative government's recent achievement of adding 20,000 more police officers to UK streets.
The minister accused Labour of misleading the public, stating that their plan doesn't actually involve recruiting 13,000 new officers.
Instead, Vickers claimed the opposition's strategy relies heavily on special constables who are volunteers, rather than full-time police officers.
He said: “This is his 17th reset. It's disastrous. We’re five months in. We've had the pledges, the priorities, the milestones, the millstones. Yes, it's not going very well.
“The worrying thing about this is, so the last government, we committed to 20,000 more police on the streets.
"We committed to putting those police and we did. There are now more police on the streets in the UK than ever before.
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“Today he’s committed to 13,000 more. And actually, it's not 13,000 more police. It's not 13,000 new police officers on our streets. It's special constables who are volunteers. He's going to find them from somewhere.
“He's also going to repurpose police officers who are on the streets now. We talk about neighbourhood policing and response policing.
“So when you ring 999 it's those response police that he is going to take away from response policing and put into neighbourhood police. It's all a bit of a swizz.
“The public want to listen to politicians make real pledges and deliver on them. Saying there are 13,000 more police coming in when there's just not completely undermines trust in politicians at large.
“The facts are there are more police on the streets now in the UK, than ever there were. We put 20,000 more on the streets.
“Last year, the Conservative government gave an additional uplift of £922 million to frontline policing. The Labour Party won't match that. They won't commit to matching that.
“I know in my community, where I go out and knock on doors and speak to people, I know that that has meant there's more police on the streets. I know that has meant that police bases are now open that weren't open before.
“It's all about balance. We don't want people sat behind desks in police stations. We want them out catching criminals, engaging with their communities.
“And crimes down, that's the biggest metric. Crime is down by around 50 per cent over the last few years. That's the positive, that's what we want the police doing.
“The job of the policeman has changed in recent years. They now deal with some horrendous things; they deal with issues with people's mental health, they deal with a lot more in terms of missing persons, they deal with a lot more in terms of the terrible things that people do online.
“So you might not see them in the street as often as you might want to but there's a fact there's more than there's ever been.”
The minister acknowledged that while police visibility might have changed, their effectiveness has increased.
from GB News https://ift.tt/pByHlwu
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