What assessment she has made of the ability of the public to access front-line police services through the provision of local police stations in London boroughs.

My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and I regularly meet the Mayor of London and the Metropolitan Police Commissioner to discuss policing in London. The Mayor and Commissioner are responsible for ensuring that their officers are accessible. Following extensive consultation with the public, led by the Mayor's office, the Met will add 2,600 officers to neighbourhood policing teams, and there will now be around 200 safer neighbourhood bases to enhance this access.

West London has lost 400 police officers in the last three years, 44 in Hammersmith and Fulham. Half of all police community support officers have gone and now my local police station, Shepherd’s Bush, is closed to the public. When my constituents cannot find an officer or a police station, does the Minister seriously expect them to report serious crimes such as rape and sexual abuse in their Post Office or in Tesco?

I hope that the hon. Gentleman and his constituents welcome the fact that crime in Hammersmith and Fulham has gone down by more than 4.5% in the past year. I am glad that he brought up the Shepherd’s Bush front counter because the latest data show that the number of visitors each day to that counter was fewer than six. If he thinks that that is a good use of police resources, frankly, he is not fit to run the proverbial whelk stall.

Wandsworth came pretty much the lowest in a reform think tank league table of visits to London front desks, with only 1.2 visitors an hour. My local police inspector has confirmed that as a result of shutting a front desk, he can put more resources on the front line. Does the Minister agree that that is a good use of the police’s time?

I do agree. My hon. Friend makes exactly the right point. The way to cut crime is to have police officers deployed correctly, not to have buildings open that in many cases very few people ever visited.

In addition to losing more than 200 police officers, in Westminster, three out of the four police stations north of Oxford street are closing. This is not just a question of access for reporting crime, although that can be important, but of community bases from where safer neighbourhood teams can operate. Does the Minister agree that the Mayor’s consultation proposal of surgeries of one hour a week to replace those police stations represents a massive reduction in police accessibility?

No, I do not. The hon. Lady says that front counters are important for reporting crime, but only one in eight crimes are reported that way, so they are not as important as they used to be. She needs to accept that a more flexible approach to making the police accessible—for example, by making them available at regular times of the week in places where people are anyway—is much better than having them sitting in police stations that we know many people will never visit.

On policing resources in London, following the strong words of the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, will the Minister join the Opposition in condemning the recent attacks on Islamic institutions, which put many lives at risk and sought to spread fear among our communities, and will he ensure that all our religious institutions are properly protected from those who wish to spread hatred, Division and terror?

I am very happy to share the hon. Lady’s sentiment. I am sure that everyone in the House will abhor and reject in the strongest possible terms the attacks on religious institutions that we have seen since the terrible event in Woolwich. I commend the Metropolitan police for ensuring that the protection available is greater than normal, because that is very important.