THE DEPUTY Mayor of Greater Manchester has criticised the Home Secretary for breaking promises and abandoning communities as emergency knife crime funding is confirmed.

She said the funding was "barely a sticking plaster".

In the next 12 months Greater Manchester Police will receive £4 million to combat knife crime.

Deputy Mayor Bev Hughes said: "It is extremely disappointing that the Home Secretary has failed to follow through on his promise to provide police with £100m of desperately needed funding to tackle knife crime.

“The £4m allocated to GMP is far short of what we were led to believe and is barely a sticking plaster for an issue that is causing significant harm to our communities.

"In Greater Manchester, we stand ready to use the additional funding that was promised to make a real difference for our young people and communities, but once again the Government has pulled the rug from under us – a move that will leave our communities feeling abandoned.

“That the allocation of funding is based on hospital data is also very short-sighted. Once a victim of knife crime is in the hospital it is too late – we need to act now and act earlier to prevent our young people from carrying knives in the first place.

“Today’s announcement has instilled a complete lack of confidence that this Government is truly taking this issue as seriously as the Home Secretary’s warm words have previously suggested.”