Boris: We're paying more for fewer police on streets

The Tory candidate for Mayor said he had unearthed new figures showing that, far from increasing police numbers, Mr Livingstone had overseen a drop in full-time bobbies on the beat.

Mr Johnson said that the Mayor's figures include Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs), but the number of "full-time equivalent" posts for real police officers had gone down by 132 in the last full year, compared with when Sir Ian Blair took over as commissioner in February 2005.

In the past two years, there has been a fall in numbers of professional police officers in 17 different boroughs, Mr Johnson said.

PCSOs have been hailed by Mr Livingstone as the key to his increase in overall police presence but critics say the "plastic police" are ineffective because they have no power of arrest. The Police Federation is also worried by the rise of the PCSOs because they are not as well trained as their professional counterparts.

Among the boroughs worst affected are Barnet, Bexley, Brent, Camden, Westminster, Hackney, Croydon, Ealing and Southwark. Westminster has seen a drop of 56 full-time posts.

It was revealed today that Met officers are spending less time on patrol. An answer to a Parliamentary question-showed that time spent on patrol has dropped and time spent on front line policing has fallen. But frontline policing in England as a whole has risen.

Mr Johnson said: "While our officers do a marvellous job we need to ask ourselves - do we really feel safer? We must look at the management of the police."

Mr Livingstone, who faces Mr Johnson and Lib-Dem Brian Paddick in the mayoral election in May, yesterday pledged to put an extra 1,000 police on the streets over all. He wants a 2.4 per cent rise in his share of Londoners' council tax to pay for the increase.

There are currently 30,996 police officers, 4,012 community support officers and 14,061 civilian staff in the Met.