Tony Lloyd takes Home Secretary to task over policing budget

Tony Lloyd MP

Rochdale MP Tony Lloyd has taken the Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, to task over cuts to the Greater Manchester Police budget.

Speaking in Parliament on Wednesday, Ms Rudd claimed: "We have protected overall police funding in real terms since 2015, increased counter-terrorism budgets and funded an uplift in the number of armed police officers."

She added: "Terrorists want us to fear and to turn on one another, but we will never give terrorists what they want. We will stand together, and we will make the point that terrorists will never win, and that our values, our country and our unity will prevail."

Mr Lloyd: "I set the budget for Greater Manchester Police for this current year and I was faced with cuts from central Government. If she wants to bring us all together to fight terrorism, she needs to recognise that combating terrorism, like other things, places real strain on our police service. We need more police officers to combat not just terrorism, but the things that we need a modern police force to do."

Ms Rudd responded: "We have protected the police budget from 2015 to 2020. We will be conducting the review to find out what else we could do better to combat terrorism. The security services are leading on the review, looking at what has happened in the past. We will have an open mind as to what is needed, depending on what that review reveals."