Could police cuts could swing the next election?

When terrorists struck just days before last year’s general election, Labour managed to successfully reframe the security debate to zero in on government cuts to police services.

“Now a damning home affairs select committee report shows why the issue may have got such traction,” writes Politico's Tom McTague.

The report by the influential Home Affairs select committee says forces are “struggling to cope” amid falling staff numbers and rising crime, and are under “considerable stress” as a result of police cuts, with vast numbers of crimes unsolved.

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It also accused the Home Office of a “complete failure of leadership”.

The report “does not make easy reading for the prime minister, the home secretary who presided over the cuts,” says McTague.

“Police forces... risk becoming irrelevant,” warns the Daily Mail, in what it describes as a “damning expose of the state of policing in England and Wales”.

The Mail adds that the findings will “further undermine public faith in the police”, following a surge in crime.

Official figures show that violent crime has almost doubled since 2015 to reach 778,000 offences, the equivalent to an offence every six seconds.

It is the impact on the streets, not in statistics, where the cuts are being felt most, however.

Neighbourhood policing in England and Wales has been reduced by more than a third since 2010, with some forces having lost more than two-thirds of neighbourhood officers, the home affairs committee found.

Stephen Doughty, a Labour member of the committee, said: “Neighbourhood policing lies at the heart of British policing, and it has reached an unacceptable state … Once those crucial local relationships are lost, it is very difficult to rebuild them, and they are vital to so many areas of policing, from counter-terrorism to serious organised crime.”

As The Sun reports that there are currently more than 700 live terror probes running in the UK, the select committee warned that failure to boost police funding could have “dire consequences" for public safety.

Diane Abbott, the shadow home secretary, said: “Police cuts have consequences. You can’t have safety and security on the cheap, but the government has been in total denial”.

The reports comes just days before the chancellor, Philip Hammond, delivers a budget which is expected to announce an end to austerity.