Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Pre-Budget: Counter-terrorism funds up 10pc

Security spending has already doubled from around £1bn before the 9/11 attacks on America.

MI5 has recruited hundreds more staff and aims to have a complement of around 3,000 by next year - twice its size in 2001.

It is not immediately apparent what difference a single budget will make to the fight against terrorism.

It will be more difficult to discover where the money is going because the intelligence budget is already opaque and not broken down.

While the counter-terror budget has gone up, the overall spending on law and order has been frozen in real terms.

Both the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice were locked into their existing budgets for the next three years.

The Government said the squeeze has come on after a period that saw a 50 per cent rise in spending on public order and safety since 1997.

The big problem for the Ministry of Justice is how to deliver a promised extra 9,500 prison places with no extra money.

There has also been a big cut of more than three per cent in the law officers' budget, though victims' programmes will be protected.

The Government has set out new targets for cutting violent crime, reducing alcohol and drug abuse and controlling immigration

Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, said: "The public expect more from public services in tackling crime, alcohol and drug abuse, security, antisocial behaviour and managing migration. We will be able to invest in improving performance, rolling out neighbourhood policing and delivering our major projects."

this article is from this website

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/10/09/nbudget109.xml


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