Cross-party support for Press campaign (From York Press)

Cross-party support for Press campaign

10:40am Thursday 27th September 2007

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MPs from across the political spectrum today vowed to fight "tooth and nail" against big cuts in funding for North Yorkshire Police - as The Press launched a Fund Our Force campaign.

The paper is calling on Home Secretary Jacqui Smith to ensure police retain adequate funding to keep crime levels down, and abandon proposals which could result in a £10 million cut in Government support for the force.

The Press editor Kevin Booth said: "The newspaper has decided to act because of the devastating consequences the change in funding would wreak on North Yorkshire and its population.

"It is almost as though the force is being penalised for its success in bringing down the crime-rate.

"I can understand the need to pump extra resources into areas hardest hit by crime, but this should be fresh money rather than cash stripped from the allocation given to successful forces like ours."

MPs have agreed to put aside political differences to battle to stop any cuts in funding.

York MP Hugh Bayley said: "I would fight cuts to policing in North Yorkshire tooth and nail."

Mr Bayley would be happy to help arrange a meeting for Chief Constable Grahame Maxwell with a Home Office Minister. He said the force now had 333 officers more than when the Labour Government came to power in 1997, along with an extra 147 community support officers, and he was determined to prevent those being reversed.

"The increase in police has reduced crime in North Yorkshire, although the crime rate is still too high," he said. "Crime almost trebled during the previous Tory Government when police numbers did not rise. We must keep our police officers."

He believed suggestions that funding might be cut by almost £10 million were the worst case scenario. He understood the need to spend more money tackling crime in hot spots such as London, but any reduction in North Yorkshire funding to pay for it would be wrong. He was happy to work with other MPs.

The Liberal Democrat Harrogate and Knaresborough MP Phil Willis said he was outraged by way the consultation had been handled.

"What I am fundamentally opposed to is the idea that we dismantle what we've built up in to one of the best police forces in Britain in order to move resources elsewhere.

"I find it a most appalling way of treating the people of York and North Yorkshire, to say, so you've got a good police force, driven down crime rates and as a reward for doing that we will actually take away funding. I think it's disgraceful. You build up excellence not dismantle it."

Mr Willis vowed to fight any decision to cut funding, saying it was not about petty party squabbling but an issue of principle.

"It is the same misguided one the Government already used with the health service," he said. "The idea that you take money away from York and North Yorkshire and depress the system we have here in order to bump it up somewhere else is wrong."

Selby's Labour MP John Grogan vowed to fight potential cuts vigorously. "Over the past ten years, the number of police in North Yorkshire has increased and if these cuts were made it would put at risk the improvements made, such as more neighbourhood policing," he said.

He added that he would work with MPs from different parties to make sure greater funding for other forces did not come at a cost to North Yorkshire.

Vale of York MP Anne McIntosh said rural constituencies should attract more funding, not less.

She said North Yorkshire MPs had a good track record of working together, but would fully brief herself on the facts surrounding the consultation before making further comment.

"My main concern with the police force for many years now is that police pensions have been running at 50 per cent of the operational budget," she said.

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