Responding to news that Labour cut 1,000 police officers in London, breaking their promise to keep our streets safe, Cllr Paul Swaddle OBE said
Labour’s decisions are making our streets here in Westminster less safe. In just one year, new figures show that London has lost over 1,000 police officers - and that includes officers taken off our streets here in Westminster.
Across the country, Sir Keir Starmer has left our police forces with a £350 million funding black hole, forcing cuts and slashing recruitment by 17%. That means fewer neighbourhood officers, slower response times, and overstretched teams who are being asked to do more with less. Forcing our police to pick and choose which crimes they respond to is simply unacceptable.
Across the country, officer numbers are down by 1,316 since Labour came to power, with London hit hardest.
At the same time, the Council is now being forced to use its own funds to hire nine Met officers for a new “Police and Council Tasking Team”, a tiny fraction of what's been lost, to tackle anti-social behaviour in hotspots across Westminster.
But let’s be clear: hiring back a handful of officers doesn’t undo the damage.It’s an expensive band-aid on a broken system. Westminster Council needs to stand up to Mayor Sadiq Khan and Labour and demand the resources we desperately need, not patch up their failures with our own coffers.
At a time when local people worry about knife crime, phone snatching on Oxford Street, anti-social behaviour around Bayswater and Lancaster Gate and drug dealing around Victoria, Westminster shouldn’t have to fund policing out of its own budget - that’s not leadership, it’s a concession.
By contrast, the Conservatives delivered the highest number of police officers in British history - recruiting 20,000 more officers and increasing police budgets to £18.4bn. But Labour is reversing that progress — and its families and businesses here in Westminster who are paying the price.
I will keep fighting to hold Labour and their failing Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, to account and to make sure Westminster has the police presence we need to feel safe in our homes and on our streets.
