

The home secretary, Sajid Javid, is set for a further clash with the prime minister after backing demands by police chiefs for an emergency grant, which they believe will be at least £15m, to fund a short-term “surge” of officers to fight knife crime.

After chairing a summit with police leaders, he said the government must listen to police demands for more resources, with those present saying he had backed their calls for more money.

Police chiefs are drawing up a bid for additional resources, to be submitted by Friday, which senior sources say is likely to be worth at least £15m. Javid will then take the argument to the chancellor, Philip Hammond, who rejected the case for more more money when pressed by the home secretary at cabinet on Tuesday.

The emergency grant would fund overtime to enable a temporary “surge” of officers, targeted at hotspots in order to suppress knife crime using measures including more stop and search, with some rules potentially loosened.

The tense atmosphere in government was exposed by the fact the clash was leaked, as recent killings of teenagers in London and Manchester pushed knife crime to the top of the agenda.

After the summit with police chiefs, including those from the seven worst hit areas, Javid said: “I think police resources are very important to deal with this.

“We’ve got to do everything we can. I’m absolutely committed to working with the police in doing this. We have to listen to them when they talk about resources.”

The prime minister claimed on Monday there was “no direct correlation” between rising crime and police cuts but backtracked after being contradicted by police chiefs including the Metropolitan police chief, Cressida Dick, who joined other senior officers in saying there was a link.

During Theresa May’s six years as home secretary from 2010, police numbers fell by 20,000 after she slashed their budgets while insisting they could cut crime by eliminating inefficiencies and working smarter.

Fierce police opposition was initially nullified as crime continued a long-term fall, but has started rising with knife killings of young people creating headlines, and police chiefs privately unanimous that the effects of austerity were a factor driving the increase of violent crime on Britain’s streets.

However, on Wednesday May announced her own knife crime summit and repeatedly rebuffed accusations from Jeremy Corbyn that a lack of police resources was the problem, seemingly going against the views of her home secretary and police chiefs.

“We are putting more resources into the police. It’s no good members on the opposition benches standing up and saying: ‘No you’re not,’” she told the Commons. “It is a fact that more money is being put into the police this year, that more money is being put into the police next year.”

Police chiefs who attended the meeting with Javid, disagreed.

The chair of the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC), Sara Thornton, said: “We know what tactics work, we know what we can do to surge operational capacity to deal with these crimes. But we haven’t always got that capacity, haven’t got the officers, so we’ve agreed by the end of the week we will set out the scale of the investment required.”

Dave Thompson, the chief constable of West Midlands police, told the Guardian the home secretary agreed more money was needed in the short term to support the surge and then also longer term to maintain the pressure to suppress violent crime.



Thompson added: “We can only surge in the short term by officers working longer hours, but we also need a sustainable surge,” he said.

Police chiefs are waiting anxiously for the paralysis in government to be broken believing the extra patrols need to be in place within weeks, because more young people are expected to be on the streets as the weather gets warmer and evenings longer.

Thompson said: “None of us want to see this continue as it gets towards the summer, it will get busier.”

Thompson’s area recently saw three recent knife crime deaths: “Some of these are fistfights becoming knife attacks because people are carrying weapons.“

Andy Cooke, chief constable of Merseyside, directly contradicted the PM and told the Guardian the cuts had damaged communities and led to more killings: “I think there is a direct correlation between police numbers and the increase in the levels of serious violence.

“The lack of the ability to be proactive and target those engaged in this violence has a significant adverse impact on our communities.

“The cuts have gone too far. Criminals have less fear they are going to be targeted and that has led to more gun discharges and serious violence.”

Police chiefs are walking a fine line, trying not to appear political and avoiding being drawn into the jockeying for the Conservative party leadership.

But Lord Stevens, the former Met commissioner, said bluntly that May was not up to the job. Asked on BBC Radio if she could address the knife crime issue, Stevens said: “I don’t like criticising people when they have got massive problems and they are down, but I doubt it.”

“The person who I think has got the ability is the present home secretary. He has got the personality, he has got the empathy, he understands the difficulties on the streets and he understands the difficulties the police are facing.”

Javid’s brother is a senior officer in West Midlands police and when he became home secretary last year he publicly distanced himself from the stance of May and her successor, Amber Rudd, on police funding and on stop and search.

Javid, who has been touted as a successor to May, also said the government was committed to creating a statutory public health duty to support efforts to reduce violent crime and that it was important to give police “more confidence” over the use of stop-and-search powers.

Some changes to bureaucracy making it easier to introduce short-term section 60 powers allowing searches without suspicion will be considered.

Ten teenagers and children have been killed so far in 2019, after 37 were killed in 2018, and 39 in 2017. The problem was thrust back into the spotlight by the murder of two 17-year-olds last weekend.

The Met arrested “a male” in Leicester on Tuesday in connection with the death of 17-year-old Jodie Chesney, who was stabbed in the back in a park in east London on Friday.

Two 17-year-olds, who cannot be named for legal reasons, appeared in court on Wednesday in connection with the death on Saturday of Yousef Ghaleb Makki, in Trafford, Greater Manchester.

Hours after the summit, a man in his twenties died shortly after being stabbed in broad daylight in Leytonstone, east London. Police said a murder investigation had been launched.