New Prime Minister Must Reverse Policing Cuts

THE new Prime Minister must adopt a new approach to policing to reverse ‘decimating’ years of cuts, South Yorkshire Police Federation has warned.

At the time of publication, Conservative MPs Jeremy Hunt and Boris Johnson were locked in a battle for the right to become the next Prime Minister.

Former candidate Sajid Javid vowed to find 20,000 more officers for the beat, a figure matched in by Johnson in his electoral manifesto.

Whoever takes the top job, South Yorkshire Police Federation Chairman Steve Kent wants them to have a different attitude to policing than that adopted by their predecessor Theresa May.

He said: “I would like to think that the new leader of the country will have a different attitude to the one that Theresa May had, who seemed to be hell-bent on the destruction of the police.

“I would like to see a fresh approach. Sajid Javid was correct – we need 20,000 officers back in this country to reflect the losses that we had and to deal with growing crime.

“The Government must pledge how they’re going to grow the police, whether it will be gradual or not, and I just want to see a complete and utter attitude change towards policing so we can begin to repair the damage.

“Essentially, the last decade has decimated us, and we need to start going back up that hill.

“South Yorkshire is recruiting an extra 200 officers, but we’ve gone down from 3,000 to under 2,500, so there’s still a hell of a lot more work needs to be done.

“For that [to happen] money needs to come from central Government, and that needs to be part of a national pledge to drive policing numbers back up.”