David Ruffley MP has today again written to the Home Secretary to express his anger at Home Office plans to force Suffolk Constabulary to merge with the Norfolk and Cambridgeshire forces.

These plans were set out in a report by HM Inspectorate of Constabulary, commissioned by the Home Office, and published on Friday 16th September. The Home Secretary has today given his official backing by accepting the main recommendations of the report.

David said:

'The plans that have been set out by one of the government's chief advisers on policing, and with the support of the Home Secretary, are shocking news for local Suffolk residents.

'Under these proposals we are set to lose our own local police force and Chief Inspector, to be instead replaced by a regional force with one Chief Constable serving a population of nearly 2.2 million.

'This is being put forward by the Home Secretary, a Norfolk MP. It is disgraceful that a local MP is championing an idea that will take police accountability away from people in individual counties and hand it to a regional force.

'That is why I have today written to Charles Clarke to express my anger and that of local Suffolk people.'