On the beat pledge 'wrong'
Spending £6m of public money to publicise a pledge that neighbourhood police will spend at least 80 per cent of their time on the beat was "wrong", said a Government minister.
Policing and Justice Minister Nick Herbert said New Labour's Policing Pledge was an example of Whitehall bureaucracy that "just became a whole lot of targets in disguise".
The 10-point pledge, an attempt by the former government to lay down a minimum standard for policing, was axed by the coalition in June as it told senior officers to focus on cutting crime alone.
Mr Herbert said: "We want to replace bureaucratic accountability like this with democratic accountability."