Labour promises to increase community police numbers

Labour has said it will bring in new laws to boost local police patrols if it wins the next general election.

Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said her party would recruit 13,000 more neighbourhood police, with a named officer for every community.

The plans would be underpinned by new legislation to guarantee more community patrols to tackle anti-social behaviour and crime, she said.

The government accused Labour of being "soft on crime".

Ms Cooper described neighbourhood officers as "the eyes and ears" in local communities.

She told the BBC: "Too often neighbourhood policing has been seen as a Cinderella service in many forces - always the one that gets squeezed or cut back if there are budget cuts or if there are pressures elsewhere."

Labour's pledge to recruit 13,000 new neighbourhood officers, which was first announced last year, includes 4,000 more Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs), external.

Ms Cooper said the proportion of police officers in neighbourhoods had dropped from 19% to 12% in the last 13 years, and there were more than 8,000 fewer PCSOs on the streets than in 2015.

The shadow home secretary said the government was running "a hands-off Home Office that has seen neighbourhood policing just crumble".

She told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "Neighbourhood policing should be the building blocks of all policing. It's the area where cuts are made whenever there is pressure.

"This is the wrong approach if you want to build trust in communities, if you want to tackle the kind of anti social behaviour growing in our town centres, and get the intelligence that helps you crack down on crime and criminals, and get more charges and convictions and prevent crime in the first place."

Ms Cooper said Labour's recruitment drive said would cost £360m, paid for through efficiency savings from forces sharing services.

As well as recruiting more officers, she said new rules would be introduced to enforce higher standards of vetting and training for police officers.

The issue of vetting has come under scrutiny after a number of high-profile cases, including that of serial rapist David Carrick, who served as Met Police officer for 20 years.

'Nothing is done'

Ms Cooper set out more details of what the party is calling a "Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee" in a speech at the Institute for Government think tank.

She accused the Conservatives of a "laissez-faire approach to crime and policing", saying the government had stood back and failed to take action to tackle knife crime, drug dealing and anti-social behaviour.

She said when it came to crime, people across the country had "countless stories of frustration and anger. Too often there is a sense that when things go wrong, no one comes and nothing is done."

She said there would be around 7,000 thefts that day across England and Wales, of which around 4,000 would be reported but only 180 people would face court.

"So quite literally, more criminals are getting away with it after 13 years of Conservative government.

"Only Labour is the party of law and order now," she argued.

Home Office minister Robert Jenrick said Labour's plans for policing were not credible, and pointed to its voting record on the Police, Courts and Sentences Bill and the Nationality and Borders Act, saying the party was "soft on crime".

The government was on course to deliver on its promise to recruit 20,000 police officers by the end of March, he added, insisting that "at that point there will be more frontline officers in this country than at any point in our history".

Mr Jenrick also said it was up to chief constables and Police and Crime Commissioners to decide the balance of officers in their area.