Suella Braverman clashes with TV presenter over police recruitment

The Independent

Suella Braverman clashed with a Sky News presenter on Monday (28 August) over the Conservatives' figures for police recruitment.  The Home Secretary spoke after police were ordered to investigate every theft and follow every "reasonable" lead in solving crimes.  Jayne Secker challenged the Home Secretary over her claim that 20,000 additional police officers had been recruited.  "You've lost 20,000, you've gained 23,000, so you've gained 3000," the host said.  "That's wrong," Ms Braverman replied.  In July, figures showed that a record number of police officers are quitting - almost 9,200 officers left the police service in the year to March.

Transcript

00:00 There are no extra resources, there are no extra staff to do these jobs, the police are

00:05 not sitting around on their hands are they? They are all working at the moment. So what

00:11 will go as a result of this? What will they not be investigating?

00:14 Well I disagree with you, there are no extra resources. We've just recruited 20,000 additional

00:21 police officers. So we now have a record...

00:23 You've recruited 20,000 additional police officers, you lost 20,000 police officers

00:27 didn't you from 2010 up to the latest date? So you've lost 20,000, you've gained 23,000,

00:33 so you've gained 3,000. That's wrong. We now have a record number

00:38 of police officers ever... It's the Home Office figures that I have

00:40 here. Ever in the history of policing. Far higher

00:45 than any previous administration. So the police have the greatest number of police officers

00:50 they've ever had at their disposal. We've also...

00:53 I've got the Home Office figures, you've got 149,000 police officers at the moment,

00:57 there were 146 in 2010, so absolutely you have got 3,000 more officers. These are the

01:02 Home Office figures. Yeah, we've got a record number of police

01:06 officers ever in the history of policing. So that's the highest number of men and women

01:12 working on the front line to stop crime and support victims.

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