Andy Burnham MP, Labour’s Shadow Home Secretary, responding to senior police officers’ comments that the era of “bobbies on the beat” has come to an end, said

“Theresa May simply cannot ignore this warning from Britain’s most senior police officers. If she accepts cuts on the scale proposed, May will be putting public safety at risk and will go down as the Home Secretary who took thousands of bobbies off the beat.

“The problem for the Government is – just as with tax credits – it wasn’t honest about what its cuts would mean before the election. If people had known the Tories planned to end neighbourhood policing as we have known it and to take bobbies off the beat, then they wouldn’t have voted for it.

“My message to Theresa May is simple - with crime starting to rise, now is not the time to cut the police.”