MPs have warned that there are dire consequences for public safety and criminal justice if Government does not provide additional police funding.
Policing is at risk of becoming “irrelevant” as the number of officers on the beat is slashed and vast numbers of crimes go unsolved, a parliamentary report warns.
The Commons Home Affairs Committee said police are “struggling to cope” and accused the Home Office of a “failure of leadership”.
Its report warned the proportion of fraud cases investigated is “shockingly low” in the context of 1.7 million offences a year, saying: “It appears highly unlikely that more than one in 200 victims ever sees their perpetrator convicted.”
Neighbourhood policing in England and Wales has been cut by more than a third since 2010, with some forces having lost more than two-thirds of neighbourhood officers, the home affairs committee found.
After removing three forces that were unable to provide like-for-like figures, the committee found that, of the remaining 33 forces, all but one reported a decline in neighbourhood officers, with falls averaging 35%. If the three removed forces were included, the reductions were still 21%.
The report said, “This is particularly important in communities in which distrust of the police and in public authorities more widely is rife, and in which those local links are all the more important.
“Nevertheless, in all neighbourhoods, without local engagement, policing is at risk of becoming irrelevant to most people, particularly in the context of low rates of investigation for many crimes.”
Labour MP Yvette Cooper, who chairs the committee, said: “Police officers across the country are performing a remarkable public service in increasingly difficult circumstances, but forces are badly overstretched.
The Home Office said it was engaging with police to ensure they get the resources they need.
But the report warned there would be “dire consequences” for public safety without additional funding and urged policing to be prioritised in the government’s Autumn Budget.
>Juthy Saha
