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A trio of top Tories have been branded "naive" for claiming a wave of gang violence has nothing to do with cutting more than 20,000 police officers since 2010.

Labour blasted ministers Amber Rudd , Nick Hurd and Sajid Javid for saying there is no evidence that austerity allowed crime to rise - as London's 2018 murder rate passed 50 so far.

In a bid to curb the violence, ministers are unveiling new powers to ban offensive weapons and acid and suggested stop and search powers could be extended.

Home Secretary Ms Rudd wrote in the Sunday Telegraph: "The evidence does not bear out claims that resources are to blame for rising violence."

Policing minister Nick Hurd admitted police are "stretched". But he said the accusations are "political" in nature and it's "categorically not the case" that cuts cause higher crime.

Communities Secretary Mr Javid added "the evidence doesn't suggest that" police cuts are responsible.

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Mr Javid told the BBC: "We had much higher numbers of police 10 years ago and much higher numbers of violent crime."

But Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn tweeted: "Theresa May and Amber Rudd are ignoring their record on security. They have cut 21,000 police officers from our streets."

Shadow Education Secretary Angela Rayner said: "I think when the Home Secretary sticks her head in the sand and suggests losing 21,000 police officers off our streets doesn't have an effect, I think that's a very naive position.

"We’ve seen cuts to youth services, education, children’s services - all these wraparound services that we know support our young people growing older and making sure they make they right choices.

"I think [that] has a knock-on effect.

"It's not just about police, of course it's not. But it's about the wider public service and about us supporting families to make the right choices."

Home Office statistics show the number of police officers in England and Wales fell from 143,734 in March 2010 to 123,142 in March 2017.

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Policing minister Nick Hurd admitted of police: “Are they stretched at the moment? Yes they are."

But he told BBC Radio 5 Live’s Pienaar’s Politics: “There is the political accusation that somehow a reduction in police numbers has been a driver of this horrendous spike in violence.

“That’s categorically not the case. The police commissioner in London has said that herself.

“Those making that argument have got to answer this - if that is the case then why did we see a similar spike in knife crime back in 2008/09… at a time when we had many thousand more police officers and much more public money being spent?”

Interviewed by the BBC's Andrew Marr Show, Tory Sajid Javid insisted there "isn't one single cause" of violent crime.

He also suggested the rise was "down to better reporting".

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But he also admitted there had been a "significant rise" in the last three or four years, saying: "There is a real increase... there is a real problem here."

Mr Javid defended Theresa May's change of tune on stop and search powers.

Then-Home Secretary Mrs May announced in 2014 she would tighten up the guidelines on "reasonable grounds" for suspicion after stop and search was used seven times more often against ethnic minorities.

At the time she said it was in some cases "an unacceptable affront to justice", adding: "I have long been concerned about the use of stop and search."

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But today Home Secretary Amber Rudd says: "Stop and search is a vital policing tool and officers will always have the Government's full support to use these powers properly."

Mr Javid told the BBC: "When Theresa May was Home Secretary, what she wanted to do was rightly make sure that when stop and search powers are used, they are used within the law.”

Despite Mrs May's 2014 reforms, Mr Javid claimed: "We haven’t changed the guidelines in any way since 2010."

Confirming powers may now be changed, he added: "We will listen [to police] and if we need to extend those powers, that's exactly what we will do."

Home Secretary Ms Rudd wrote in the Sunday Telegraph: “As we confront this issue, I know that the same arguments and criticisms will emerge.

"One is the contention that there are not enough officers on the streets. The evidence, however, does not support this.

"In the early 2000s, when serious violent crimes were at their highest, police numbers were rising. In 2008, when knife crime was far greater than the lows we saw in 2013-14, police numbers were close to the highest we’d seen in decades.”

But Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott said: "By cutting 21,000 officers since 2010 they have completely undermined the ability of the police to enforce any new powers.

"The Tories need to put their money where their mouth is, give the police the resources they need to keep people safe and pursue a collaborative approach to tackling violent crime on our streets."

Shadow policing minister Louise Haigh said a "public health approach" to tackling violent crime was required, involving not just the police.

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Ms Haigh, a former special constable, told Sky's Sunday With Paterson: "We cannot arrest ourselves out of this problem, we can't prosecute our way out of this problem and we have got a fantastic example on our doorstep in Scotland, which used to be one of the most dangerous countries in the developed world, one of the most violent countries in the developed world.

"Last year they didn't have a single young person that was killed through bladed weapons or through knives.

"And that is because they took a cross-governmental approach to tackling knife crime."

She claimed that no research had been done into knife crime since 2006, adding: "We don't know what the impact of austerity or indeed of the changes around social media have had on why young people are carrying knives and that should have been there in today's announcement from the Government on their serious violence strategy."