Cameron's Conservatives

Tina

“David Cameron would cut a £160m from crime-fighting budgets right now, that is the equivalent of losing three and half thousand police officers, how can we afford to take this risk?”

David Cameron wants to cut public spending this year – in the middle of a recession - by £5 billion. Most departments including the Home Office would be restricted to a smaller, 1 per cent, real increase in their budgets this year.

“And I think it’s, perfectly acceptable to say that’s an increase but we’re going to trim the increase and use that £5 billion, £4 billion of it to cut the taxes on savings and the rest of it we’ll spend in another way.”
David Cameron, speaking on the BBC’s AM Show on 11 January 2009

“Now what I would do, let's say there's an election April this year, I'm free, election April this year, I'd immediately instruct my ministers to go into their departments and say instead of the increase of perhaps 2% real terms you're expecting, it's a 1% real terms increase”
David Cameron speaking at a press conference at the St Stephen’s Club in Westminster on January 5 2009

For the Home Office, that would mean having £160 million less this year in the middle of a recession to spend on fighting crime and protecting the UK’s borders. 

Since January, the Conservatives have failed to set out exactly how the Home Office would be expected to reduce its spending in this way in the middle of a recession.  But £160 million is the equivalent to the cost of employing 3,500 police officers.