Angela Eagle: I’ll continue to campaign against police cuts

Apr 20 2011 Wallasey News

ALTHOUGH crime has fallen, people in our area always tell me it’s still too high.

I agree with them, because any victim of crime is one too many.

That’s why I want to continue to see crime fall, as it did by 43 per cent under the last Government.

And that’s why I am so angry about the Government’s huge 20 per cent cut to police funding.

They are cutting too far too fast and it is hurting frontline policing.

Labour recruited nearly 17,000 more police officers in addition to 16,000 new PCSOs, and the chance of being a victim of crime was at a 30-year low. Yet now the Government has cut over 12,500 police officers across the country. Here in Merseyside our police force could lose 800 officers.

My priority as your Member of Parliament is to push for further cuts in crime not cuts to police numbers.Š

I want the Government to be getting more frontline officers on the streets, strengthening neighbourhood policing and taking a zero-tolerance approach to anti-social behaviour.

But because of the Government’s 20 per cent cut to the police budget our Chief Constable has been put in an impossible position.

The police cannot be exempt from making savings, but going too far too fast puts the fight against crime at risk.