POLICE PUT TO THE SWORD BY OUT OF TOUCH TORIES

I HAVE not been afraid to voice my concerns over the scale and speed of the cutbacks being applied by the Tory-Lib Dem government over the last two years.

They have cut deep and they have cut far and wide. From councils to community groups, very few people have managed to carry on as normal in the face of such savage attacks on services.

Indeed, it is only the very richest people, millionaires and those paid extortionate salaries, who have escaped David Cameron’s sword.

But you really start worrying when the reality of those cuts is fewer police officers on the street. Understandably, chief constables up and down the land are up in arms over how they are expected to defend their communities against crime.

And that is a reality we now face.

Last week, police officers from my Derby North constituency and from across the country descended on London to march in protest against the 20 per cent cuts to their funding.

When will the government stop and listen to the professionals who are trying so desperately to make their voices heard?

An incredible 16,200 police officers will be cut nationally by 2015. That is a huge number. Put it another way, that’s half the population of a town like Lichfield, or just under a tenth of the population of a city like York.

Five per cent of officers in Derbyshire who respond to 999 calls have gone already. In total, 154 officers have been lost from the county so far, part of a regional figure topping 600.

Incredibly, these cutbacks come at a time when the government is looking to shake up the way police forces are run. Police authorities will be a thing of the past, with Police Commissioners, a bit like county-wide sheriffs, due to be elected in November.

The argument about the sanity of that particular move has been and gone. But whether it is right or wrong, it surely makes no sense at all to massively deplete the Police Commissioners’ resources before they’ve even started.

What hope do they have?

Fear of crime continues to be an issue in communities across Derby and Derbyshire, and sapping our police force is hardly the answer.

The Tory-Lib Dem alliance was not elected on this ticket. It has no mandate to do this and the Government should think again.