The UK needs a “national security police force” to crack down on extremism and handle counter-terrorism operations, according to Tory leadership hopeful Tom Tugendhat.
Speaking on GB News, he said: “What we've got here is we've got a situation where we haven't got two-tier justice, we've got completely inconsistent justice.
“We don't have police officers regularly arresting - I don't blame the individual officers. This is a question of leadership.
“This is a question of making sure we get the right decisions by police leaders and political leaders and that's not what we've seen from Keir Starmer. It's not what we've seen from Yvette Cooper…
“That's why we need to see some real change, because it's not just about funding more police officers. We've done brilliantly on that, but it's not just that. It's also about prison places, and that's where we need to make a difference.”
Asked why only 5.5% of crimes are solved by police, he said: “This is why I've called for a change of leadership, because we need to look at the way in which the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the College of Policing are operating.
“We need to make sure we're getting the right leaders in and we're getting the right effects, Now, in somewhere like our great capital in London, we know that the Metropolitan Police have two duties.
“They have one, which is obviously their territorial policing responsibility, you know, keeping people safe on the streets, and then they have the national responsibility, counter-terrorism policing and so on.
“Now I think, frankly, that's just too great a span. I'd like to see a new police force, the National Security Police Force, set up so that it's actually able to operate, supporting counter-terrorism operations around the United Kingdom and supporting us against the state threats that, sadly, we're seeing all too often.
“You've heard me saying how Iranian agents have tried to do harm in our country. You've heard that the National Security Act that I introduced has already led to more arrests in my time as security minister of Chinese and Russian agents than in the previous decade.
“We need to be absolutely up to date on this, in response to the threats that we really do face.”
WATCH ABOVE.
