Michael Fabricant says "The Home Secretary must be living in cloud cuckoo land if he thinks the yob culture alive – and sadly well – in Birmingham and even Lichfield on a Friday and Saturday night will be stopped by community safety officers who have little training and no powers of arrest". This follows David Blunkett’s announcement today that 20,000 community safety officers will be recruited. "The Home Secretary’s plans will end up with people getting seriously hurt."

"I have been out on patrol with Staffordshire police officers on a number of occasions and I know what they have to face even in a relatively peaceful city like Lichfield. Police training is thorough in the UK because it needs to be. Blunkett’s new force will have little training and no powers of arrest. They will be allowed to ‘detain’ people for 30 minutes until real police arrive. But how will they do that? I don’t think the average drunken 15 stone yob will wish to be detained at 11pm until the police arrive. People will get hurt as a result. This is as daft an idea as frog marching criminals to the cashpoint machine. This plan, however, will be an expensive waste of taxpayer’s money.

"We need more real police officers on our street: not a cheap inferior alternative" adds Michael.

Michael Fabricant out on a patrol with PC Dean Cooper of the Staffordshire Police.