One of the great privileges of my job as MP for West Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly has been to get a really good relationship, develop a really good relationship, with our police officers and police and community support officers, and while I've been inspired the whole of the time is their commitment to the job - their graft on our streets, trying to identify the challenges and situations and crime that people have faced or experienced and then try to address it.
But what I know is the case and continues to be true is that there just aren't enough of the brilliant neighbourhood teams that we need. So I've been working with the Police and Crime Commissioner but also pressing government for more funding because actually neighbourhood policing - police men and women on the street, and police and community support officers - do a brilliant job in addressing fear of crime, and also preventing crime and nipping crime in the bud. We call it low level crime, it's crime and it needs to, we need to, get a much better response - we can only do that if we have the people on the streets, boots on the ground, doing that task. So they do a great job but we need more of them.
