Politics latest: Boris Johnson’s former top aide advises Nigel Farage on how to win keys to No 10 | Politics News

Welcome back to the Politics Hub.

It’s recess, so MPs are out of Westminster, but there’s still plenty to be getting on with.

Overnight, a series of senior police officers wrote a public letter calling on the government to increase their funding to deal with prisoners being let out of detention early.

Last week, the government announced plans to reduce sentences in order to manage prison overcrowding.

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley, NPCC chairman Constable Gavin Stephens, and the chiefs of Merseyside, West Midlands, Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire police called for “serious investment” in a letter published in The Times.

They cited the “increasing public demand, growing social volatility … and new serious and organised crime threats emboldened by the online world”.

“A lack of investment will bake in the structural inefficiencies for another three years and will lose a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reform the service,” they added.

The officers said the emergency release of people from the prison system and recommendations in the sentencing review would put more pressure on policing, as “we will inevitably be drawn into the control of criminals who would previously have been in prison”.

Sir Mark, as well as the heads of MI5 and the National Crime Agency, were among those who warned that easing release restrictions could be “of net detriment to public safety”.

A Home Office spokesperson insisted the government is backing the policy with more than a billion pounds, and a Ministry of Justice spokesperson said they are planning to build thousands more prison cells in the coming years.

Speaking to us this morning for the government is housing minister Matthew Pennycook, and shadow work and pensions secretary Helen Whately.