IN reply to Owain Gardner, Labour candidate for Fulford (Letters, April 12), under Labour the police were being crushed by paperwork and pointless targets.

Police officers don’t sign up to spend 14 per cent of their time on patrol and spend most of the day processing a single arrest; hundreds of hours a year can be freed by scrapping a lot of the paperwork. This will put hundreds of police back on the streets.

This is the legacy left by Labour. The Conservatives promise to free the police from pointless paperwork and targets. Under Labour, gun crime and knife crime went up and violence and disorder went up on our streets; the Conservative Party is the only party that will be tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime.

Terry Smith, Classic Cutz, Fourth Avenue, York.