The blue line gets thinner

The police – like the rest of the public sector – are expected to do more with less and the challenge for Ministers and senior officers is how the savings can be achieved without preventing them from protecting the public.

During the General Election politicians assured voters that cuts would be targeted at waste and bureaucracy as they woke up to the importance of protecting frontline services. The reality is, however, that cuts on the scale envisaged by the coalition cannot be achieved lightly.

Yorkshire police forces should not be made to pay the price for bad decisions made in City banks or in Whitehall, however. They are already shrinking at a faster rate than anywhere else in the country and new figures showing there are now almost 600 fewer officers serving this region than in 2008 underline the problem.

Humberside Police, which has seen the sharpest fall in the region, claims there has not been an impact on its frontline policing. With retirements cited as one of the main reasons for the drop in numbers, however, questions need to be asked about why Yorkshire's forces have seen such a steep decline and what impact this will have if the trend continues.

It is possible for police to still provide a top class service amid the cuts but there is no justification for Yorkshire to continue losing officers at a faster rate than the rest of the country.

The challenges facing the forces in this region are enormous – from the planning of terrorist attacks and large-scale organised crime to

policing inner-cities and preserving the safety of people and

businesses in great swathes of the countryside. Our police forces must not be unfairly handicapped in these vital battles.