David Ruffley

Now rank and file officers send a message of ill-will to Home Secretary over their pay deal

A Chief Constable has delivered a withering snub to beleaguered Home Secretary Jacqui Smith by refusing to circulate her Christmas message to the force.

Gillian Parker, Chief Constable of Bedfordshire, has instead sent out her own message to officers incensed by Ms Smith's decision not to honour a pay rise in full.

A Police station has closed every week since Labour came to power in 1997, Government figures reveal.

A total of 550 shut their doors for good over the decade. Of the surviving stations, only one in eight is open round the clock.

They have been replaced by police kiosks, mobile vans and offices in community centres.

The figures emerged two weeks after schoolboy Jack Large was stabbed to death outside an unmanned police station in Essex.

David Ruffley , Tory police spokesman, said station closures undermined confidence in the police.

Police officers spend more time filling in forms than they do patrolling the streets, new figures show.

The average time spent on patrol by all officers in England and Wales is now barely 13 per cent, while paperwork ties them up for nearly 20 per cent of their shifts.

Despite Government claims about reduced bureaucracy and more visible policing, the Home Office figures show that "incident-related paperwork'' - primarily forms relating to arrests or interventions such as stop and search - is keeping officers off the streets.

Police officers are spending more time filling in forms and less patrolling the streets - despite Government promises to stop them being hampered by red tape.

Official figures reveal that 19.7 per cent of their working day is spent on bureaucracy such as filing crime reports, preparing for court, writing letters and sending memos.

Only 13.6 per cent is spent on patrol, according to 'depressing' statistics uncovered by the Tories. In 2004-05, these figures were 18.4 per cent and 14 per cent.

Police are targeting speeding motorists as 'easy pickings' while ignoring more dangerous drivers who are harder to catch or prosecute, critics claim.

Convictions for speeding have risen sharply, from 700,000 in 1997 to 1.9million in 2005.

Yet during the same period there was a dramatic decline in the numbers punished for ignoring traffic signs or drink-driving.

Home Office figures uncovered by the Tories show that convictions for 'neglecting pedestrian rights' failing to stop at crossings or driving on pavements - fell by 55 per cent, from 6,322 to 2,939.

Our fears of the Asbo generation are way out of proportion with reality, Welsh researchers have claimed. A study by academics at Swansea University asked 500 people of different ages what they thought about youth crime.

They found 60% of respondents felt youth offences had increased over the past two years, with older people significantly more likely to believe it.

In fact, official youth crime, as reported by the Swansea Youth Offending Team, had fallen 26% between 2002 and 2003 and 2004 and 2005.

Police officers have become more jailers than crime fighters after figures yesterday revealed the number of prisoners held in police cells soared 13-fold in a year.

Police stations had to be used to hold inmates on more than 60,000 occasions last year.

The Tories said it was due to Labour's appalling handling of the prison overcrowding crisis.

The equivalent of 167 prisoners in police cells every night of the year costs taxpayers more than £23million, with the average £385-a-night bill per head more than some rooms at the Ritz hotel in London.

After Gordon Brown bottled going to the polls last autumn, it emerged that Labour had spent pounds 1 million preparing for the election-that-never-was.

But to what extent were ministers already in election mode? David Ruffley , the Tory MP and shadow police reform minister, has uncovered figures which show that Home Office ministers signed off a huge increase in the cost of policing the Labour conference in Bournemouth in September - days before the Prime Minister was expected to seek a dissolution of Parliament.

Ministers were accused of "complacency" yesterday for letting armed police numbers fall while gun crime has been soaring. The drop has been most pronounced in "hotspot" areas which have seen the biggest rises in offences, according to figures obtained by the Tories. Three of Wales' four force areas also saw a drop in the number of armed police since 2002.

The apparent reductions come despite the Government repeatedly boasting that total police strength is the highest it has ever been.

The number of armed police on patrol has fallen -despite a RISE in deadly gun culture, figures reveal today.

There are 154 fewer trained gun cops than there were a decade ago, according to Home Office statistics.

But the number of criminals convicted of having firearms is up 43 per cent.

Police figures also show an 11 per cent rise in the number of gun crimes.

Shadow Minister for Police Reform David Ruffley said: "Poor ministerial planning means police officers are being thrown into gun hotspots without being properly equipped."