Boris Johnson Says Policing Has Improved Since Cuts
6 June 2017, 14:07
The Foreign Secretary tore into Jeremy Corbyn’s record on anti-terror legislation while defending the state of policing under Theresa May.
Yesterday Jeremy Corbyn backed calls for Theresa May to resign over her management of police cuts while Home Secretary. He later back-tracked on this.
Speaking to Nick Ferrari this morning, Johnson dismissed Labour’s position as incredible given its history.
“A lot of this criticism is frankly a bit rich coming from a Labour Party that no only wanted to cut the police by 20% in 2015.”
“Diane Abbot was opposed to proscription of Al Qaeda for heaven’s sake. They’ve opposed every kind of anti-terrorism measure for the last 30 years, and until the events of last weekend Jeremy Corbyn was actually opposed to the police having the powers to shoot to kill.”
Johnson also insisted that far from damaging the police’s effectiveness, it had actually become better since 2010, in spite of 20,000 officers being cut.
“If you look at what’s happened under the Conservative’s and Theresa May you’ll see a very substantial fall in crime.
“Yes there have been reductions in police numbers, nobody denies that, but there have also been much more efficient deployment of those officers and significant falls in crime.”
He defended the specific area of counter-terrorism saying there had been a 11 per cent year on year increase in funding with an extra £500 million now being spent on it.
