David Ruffley

FEEDING convicts held in police stations because of a shortage of prison cells has sent food bills soaring.

Serving grub at a local nick costs up to six times as much as it does in jails - £12 a meal compared with £2 a day.

Last year the total bill came to £732,000 - £600,000 more than if prison cells had been available.

Tory David Ruffley, who uncovered the figures, said: "Taxpayers will be appalled by the waste."

Shadow policing minister, David Ruffley , is miffed to discover that security at this year's Labour Party conference will cost the taxpayer 63 per cent more than two years ago.

"Figures I have unearthed show that the cost of policing the Labour conference in Manchester has risen from pounds 3.98 million in 2006 to pounds 6.5 million this year,'' he tells me.

"Meanwhile, the Home Office has allocated only pounds 4.5 million to police the Conservative conference in Birmingham. Why is there such a huge disparity?''

AT LEAST one police officer is attacked on duty every hour while the number suffering serious injury is soaring.

More than 500 officers were seriously injured last year - up by a fifth in just two years, Home Office figures show.

And separate statistics revealed the number of officers injured or killed by a firearm has rocketed by 250 per cent since 1997.

It came as the number of full-time police officers in England and Wales fell once again, while the number of civilian "plastic bobbies" increased by 17 per cent.

David Ruffley MP Shadow Minister for Police Reform: 'New figures reveal massive increases in numbers killed by knives in the last ten years'

Shadow Police Reform Minister, David Ruffley MP said: 'These latest Home Office statistics I have unearthed show that between 1997 and 2006/07 there has been a 21% increase in the numbers of homicides, from 609 in 1997 to 734 in 2006/07. Over the same time period, the numbers of male victims has soared by 40%, from 395 in 1997 to 547 in 2006/07.

LABOUR'S answer to police red tape is to create another layer of officialdom- a new "bureaucracy champion".

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith had pledged to make a "bonfire of forms".

But a leaked draft of the Policing Green Paper, to be published today, says such an approach to tackling the red tape swamping officers would be "futile".

Instead it promises a "bureaucracy champion" at senior Government level to see where inroads can be made.

It makes no mention of how controversial "stop and search" forms- heavily criticised for adding to bureaucracy- will be addressed.

GUIDELINES ordering police to respond to emergency calls within three hours and to attend less urgent incidents such as burglaries within three days have been drawn up by the Home Office.

The astonishing proposals were designed as 'national standards for local policing' in England and Wales.

They laid down a three-hour target for officers to reach an incident which 'requires policing intervention'.

And they allowed police to wait a leisurely three days where 'there is less immediate need' for their presence.

FIVE people are stabbed to death every week as knife crime has risen by a fifth since Labour came to power, figures show today.

The statistics seen by The Daily Telegraph come on the day ministers publish for the first time data showing the scale of the knife crime "epidemic'', which has now spread from cities to the shires.

CRIME victims face a three-day wait to see a police officer under draft Government targets, the Daily Express can reveal.

Even callers dialling 999 may not see an officer for three hours in response times to be unveiled tomorrow by Home Secretary Jacqui Smith.

Draft documents leaked to the Daily Express reveal remarkably lax timescales within which the police are expected to attend incidents or crime scenes.

The standards will be contained in the long-anticipated Policing Reform Green paper published tomorrow.

MOTORISTS are paying four times more in speeding fines than when Labour came to power, according to figures obtained by the Conservatives.

Drivers are now paying pounds 200 a minute to the public purse, prompting the Tories to accuse the Government of treating them as "cash cows''.

In 1997, 712,753 speeding tickets were issued as a result of motorists being caught by camera and police patrols.

By 2006, according to figures released by the Home Office in a Commons written reply, this had soared to 1,773,412.

Parents demand a curfew

NEARLY 70 knife crimes are being committed in England and Wales every day.

The tally of people stabbed or mugged at knife-point has reached 25,000 in the past year, according to the latest figures.

Opposition MPs called them "shocking" and demanded the Government takes action.

But proposals by ministers to force yobs to visit knife victims in hospitals were slated "soft" by MPs and campaigners.

And a poll suggested the public instead backed a curfew on youngsters to keep them off the streets at night.