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News Desk
Yvette Cooper the shadow Home Secretary in an article in today's Evening Standard has attacked the mayor of London Boris Johnson as offering "distraction" rather than clear answers on the scale of cuts facing the Metropolitan Police in London, in an escalation of hostilities between the opposition and Government on public sector cuts. "Wide is the gap between the photo-ops from the Mayor and the figures released by the Metropolitan Police in the past two weeks"
The Metropolitan Police will have to make cuts of £366 million of its £3.9 billion annual budget in the next three years despite having the weight of securing the 2012 Olympics and the prospect of a crime wave provoked by the rise of unemployment and the economic slowdown the capital is experiencing.
Yvetter Coopper said, "Boris Johnson and the Conservative Party are supporting major cuts to the Metropolitan Police - part of a perfect storm on law and order which will make it much harder to get crime down. Unless they change course, it will be London communities that pay the price."
The Mayor has been accused by the Labour party of not making clear the impact of the cuts to the police with Cooper claiming, "Johnson leveling with Londoners about what this really means."
"The Mayor has claimed that police numbers will rise. But figures from the Metropolitan Police show the reverse. By 2013 there will be 1,800 fewer police officers in London compared with the time of the election last year: that's the equivalent of 50 fewer in every London borough."
The Conservatives have also been defeated in the House of Lords on the issue of electing police commissioners, with the Home Secretary Theresa May conceding the US style scheme may now only be rolled to "a small number of forces".
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