Oxon police commissioner: 'EU allows radicals and criminals to come to UK and flourish'

Writing in today's Daily Telegraph, Anthony Stansfeld said police would "do their utmost" to control crime and prevent disorder but were being hamstrung by central government spending cuts and a lack of controls on immigration. 

The Conservative said: "Until we can control our borders and our sovereignty the current situation can only deteriorate further."

Mr Stansfeld said that although general crime was now low, he was "seriously worried" about the growing areas of fraud and cyber crime, radical Islamic terrorism and serious organised crime.

The "greatest threat" to social stability was the Schengen Agreement, he said, which meant border controls in the EU were "almost non­-existent" and allowed extremists to "come to our country and flourish".

• Anthony Stansfeld, the Conservative police and crime commissioner for the Thames Valley.

He added: "There is a small but significant number who wish us harm and who wish to impose their unpalatable beliefs upon us.

"Their ideology has more in common with extreme fascism than anything else and their anti-Semitism is as profound as that of Nazi Germany.

"We need to wake up to, and take far more seriously, the threat they pose to our safety and to our country."

Tory Mr Stansfeld also claimed the open borders had caused Eastern Europeans to spot "an opportunity" and this meant more organised crime, operated from abroad, had come to the UK.

He said: "The pickings are far easier in a rich liberal country such as ours, than in their own poorer countries; our legal system is much kinder should they be caught; and their ability to leave the country while on bail makes the threat of imprisonment at best weak.

"And as the EU increases its membership, with more Eastern European nations joining, such as Albania, the situation can only worsen.

"Already, the increase in murder rates and serious violence across the UK is now beginning to reflect this."

And he said vital cash to pay for more police officers was being cut when in fact 200 more were needed each year to cope with population increases.

This, Mr Stansfeld said, was not the fault of the Home Office but the Treasury, as he launched a stinging attack on spending that was "wasted on well-intentioned infrastructure programmes, while even more is spent subsidising Europe".

Mr Stansfeld added: "The vast sums we pour into the EU have no auditable trail, no democratic oversight, and much is wasted or ends up in criminal hands."

A spokesman for the Treasury said: "Leaving the EU would put our national security at risk.

"We would lose our ability to exchange vital information on terrorism and crime with EU partners; we would cease to benefit from the European Arrest Warrant, which enables us to extradite wanted criminals from other member states; and our co-operation with the French to tackle illegal immigrants trying to get into Britain at Calais would be threatened.

"Staying in a reformed EU gives us the best of both worlds.

"We get to keep the major economic and security benefits but, because of the new deal the Prime Minister has negotiated, we are permanently out of ‘ever closer union’, we will never be part of a European superstate and we are taking steps to tackle the drivers that encourage unsustainable migration to Britain.

"We have never been part of the Schengen border-free zone and never will be."

Meanwhile, in a separate development today, Shadow Defence Secretary Emily Thornberry said a sharp reduction in pirate attacks off Somalia was "incontrovertible proof" that European Union membership helps Britain achieve its security priorities.

• Emily Thornbury, the Shadow Defence Secretary. Picture: PA wire

She highlighted figures from the EU's Operation Atalanta counter-piracy mission, which showed that the number of attacks on ships fell from a peak of 176 in 2011 to two in 2014 and none at all in 2015.

Some 47 ships or crews were seized by pirates in 2010, but numbers have dwindled sharply and the last successful attack was in 2012. From a high of 736 hostages and 32 ships being held by pirates, numbers dropped last year to 26 hostages and no ships being held.

Ms Thornbury said: "That is not something we could have achieved on our own, and it is a powerful reminder that it is only through collaboration and co-operation with our European partners that we can tackle the shared international challenges we face."